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endavid@gograybox.comCopyright 20162016-12-06T23:21:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/three-key-ecommerce-trends
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/three-key-ecommerce-trends#When:23:21:00Z
With the Thanksgiving holiday now behind us, it’s that time of year again to look at any trends coming out of the Black Friday and Cyber Monday retail “holidays.” All signs point to another record-breaking year for the weekend, with $3.45 billion in sales generated on
Cyber Monday alone, a 12.1% jump over last year.

Beyond the continuing trend of consumers shifting more of their purchasing through digital channels, we’ve seen a few additional ecommerce trends as we head into 2017.

Black Friday could overtake Cyber Monday next year

Mobile sales surpassed the $1 billion threshold for sales in one day on Black Friday for the first time

Amazon is now largest retailer of apparel online

Black Friday Could Overtake Cyber Monday

While Cyber Monday continues to be the single largest day for
ecommerce sales , Black Friday brought in $3.34 billion, the 21.6% year-over-year growth since 2015 means that Black Friday could eclipse Cyber Monday. If existing ecommerce growth trends continue, we’d project that Black Friday and Cyber Monday will generate $4.06 billion and $3.86 billion respectively in 2017.

As retailers move up the start of Black Friday earlier and earlier, it’s no surprise that more consumers will pass on the break-of-dawn wakeups in favor the comfort of their homes in their post-turkey haze.

Mobile Sales Broke $1 Billion in Single-day Sales on Black Friday

For the first time, more than $1 billion in mobile sales ($1.2 billion to be exact) was generated in a single day on Black Friday — a 33% increase over 2015 — and represented 36% of all sales that day.

Even though overall conversion rates on mobile continue to lag behind those on desktops and laptops, it’s clear that optimizing ecommerce experience for mobile sales and tablet experiences will be that much more important in 2017. Apple’s
rollout of Apple Pay this year, which add to existing mobile-first payment options, only serve to lessen the barriers for users and we suspect to see more significant increases in mobile sales revenue for 2017.

Amazon Now Largest Retailer of Apparel Online

An unexpected retailer is cleaning up in apparel sales: Amazon. For the online reseller of absolutely everything else under the sun, Amazon generated $16.3 billion in clothing, more than Macy's, Nordstrom, Kohl's, Gap, and L Brands (owner of Victoria’s Secret) in the same period...
combined! Now all that stands in their way of dominating apparel sales across all channels is Walmart.

In spite of the fact that buying clothes online presents its own issues of consumers not being able to try things on, liberal return/exchange policies, providing visibility to users as to how true-to-size (or not) products are, and aggressive pricing, it should be no surprise they’re doing so well.

They’ve also made some key investments in fashion by starting up their own private-label clothing brands (a la Amazon Basics) and sponsoring New York Men’s Fashion Week. Talent-wise, Amazon brought in executives from Barneys New York and former editors at Vogue to consult on overall strategy.

The strategy seems to be working: while Nordstrom, Sears, Macy's, Kohl's, JCPenney, and Dillard's collectively lost $225 million in apparel sales this last year, Amazon reported
increases of $1.1 billion.

While every other retail segment has been competing with the 800 lbs gorilla, Amazon, for years, it’s apparent that if clothing retailers small and large don’t have strategy for competing online, they need one.

]]>2016-12-06T23:21:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/whisky-friday-the-whisky-manhattan
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/whisky-friday-the-whisky-manhattan#When:14:00:00ZThis is my go to drink when I want to feel fancy and dignified. The classic manhattan. It’s strong, smooth and a downright velvety delight. It’s also super easy to make.

You’ll need only a few ingredients:

Whisky. I’ld recommend a Rye, but any sort of Bourbon would also do. (Don’t get to fancy and waste a great whisky on a cocktail.)

If you want to feel posh, stir it up for about 30 seconds. Otherwise, shake it up. You want to see cold on the outside of the shaker and get about 40% of the ice to dilute. It should be a nice reddish brown color.

Pour into a Martini glass and for an extra flourish add a maraschino cherry. Enjoy!

Do you ever just stand in wonder that we legitimately live in the “Future”? I mean it’s obvious we live in the future from a time sense, but I mean capital F, “Future” in the Star Trek and Back to the Future since. The technology around us is transforming lives, disrupting businesses and changing just about everything. This is the march of never-ending progress and it will continue to steam on, but I wanted to take a moment to look into the upcoming trends for how technology is going to continue to change and evolve in 2017.

Note that I’m not advocating that all of these are GOOD changes for society, nor should they be applied universally in all facets of our lives. I’m not declaring any value to these trends, just that they are the trends we see as experts in the field. Each of these trends is on an upward arc and when realized, will completely change some aspect of our lives.

1. Virtual Reality / Augmented Reality

Virtual reality (VR) uses advanced video game technology to immerse the user into a 3D environment that combines sight, sound and movement. In the game world, you feel like you’ve transported yourself to a literally different space. It's unlike anything else. The technology has been around for a while, but 2017 may be the year it hits the mainstream.
Sony’s PlayStation VR works with a standard PS4, and Microsoft has committed to an XBOX version this year as well. Meanwhile, a couple of companies are competing for the high-end of the market to provide the very best experience via a computer connection.

As soon as you experience VR, you can see this is the future of games, videos, and other forms of entertainment. Concerts, sports and other live events will be experienced in VR – where everyone gets the best seat. Facebook’s
Oculus VR, is also working on a tool to communicate with friends in VR space.

Augmented reality (AR) may actually provide the bigger change however. AR uses headgear or other technologies to allow the user to see or be aware of real space but it overlays virtual objects into that real space. Pokemon Go is already a huge hit and the first to really take advantage of it. But imagine running with a heads up display that allows you to receive information and context from your surroundings, and live chat with your friends in this simulated space.

VR and AR will change how we interact with each other and how we consume and interact with information and entertainment.

2. Voice Control

In conjunction with artificial intelligence, we’re seeing a shift in user experience to towards voice driven interaction. This depends on the hardware capabilities of course, but look at how Siri (Apple), Cortana (Microsoft), Google Assistant (Google), Alexa (Amazon) and Viv (Samsung), increasingly integrate voice control into everything from these companies. Apple is targeting wearable tech, Microsoft on your computer, and XBOX, Google, Amazon and Samsung on a myriad of little devices you carry on your person and in your homes.

You can see a world in the near future when you can talk to your computer to as the primary way to execute simple commands or get information. I don’t think it is the going to be 100% mainstream by the end of next year, but I think it’ll grow significantly and be ever more omnipresent.

3. Hacking / Data Security Breaches

The big technology story of this US election season has really been the story of hacking. We had data breaches on the DNC and Clinton’s campaigns. [
reference] We have Trump asking Russia to hack Clinton. Meanwhile Obama has condemned hacking as the new battlefront of the 21st century [reference].

Consumer hacking is more mainstream than ever. Yahoo lost 500 million user accounts years ago, covered it up, and we don’t even care that much. It’s becoming normal and we’re getting used it to it… which is leading to new technologies like end-to-end encryption, secure hardware enclaves, and fingerprint sensors. These are all great advances, but the threat and potential damage from hacking will continue to be part of our lives.

4. Real World Data / Customer Tracking (Beacons)

In the online marketing world, one of the most powerful tools in our arsenal is that we can track customer behavior with a myriad of software products. In some cases we can identify people and change that software to suit them better. We can see things like how long someone has been on a website, if they get lost or confused, where they came from, what they purchase on each visit, etc. This data allows businesses to build better digital products and serve their customers better.

Beacons are a relatively new technology that allows marketers and businesses to bring that level of tracking into real world interactions. A beacon is a small, quarter sized, battery-powered device that works via Bluetooth in a physical location to track and communicate with your phone.The average Starbucks now has multiple beacons in their cafes [reference]. Through their beacons, Starbucks can tell how long you are waiting in line, identify you with the Starbucks App, see if you looked at the upsell items, measure how long you waited for coffee, tally how often you visit that location, etc. They can also use that beacon to send you targeted messages from your local cafe.

The key feature of the beacon is it tags your phone so you can be identified and advertised to in the future. However, beacon use can go beyond businesses using them in their own stores. We’ve also heard of beacons being placed in competitors stores so brands can build a competitive profile. We also know of beacons being placed at busy intersections to tag those that drive by and capture data on those who walk or drive by.

At a marketing conference recently, a speaker was talking about how Wal-Mart and Target are using satellite time to track how well a regional promotion does in bringing traffic to their stores. For example, they use satellites to monitor how full a store’s parking lot is and to tell how long a specific customer is inside the store. Other retailers have specialty cameras that keep a live count of people in the store and what departments they are shopping in.

All this data gets sent back to marketing departments for central processing, analysis and future promotions and store improvements. In some cases, this can also be combined with online customer data to get a better profile of purchasing behavior.

Make no mistake, this is definitely creepy marketing and you should feel a little violated by these technologies. But they are here and they are being used by the big brands — similar tracking has also been in place for years online.

5. Automated Kiosks

Kind of unbelievably, the first 100% automated grocery store kiosk was installed in 1992 and it feels like they stopped innovating on those since. They’re generally terrible. But in the last few years, we saw a large thrust into the kioskification of simple service retail tasks. There are ticket kiosks at movie theaters and tourist attractions, self-serve hotel check-ins, restaurant ordering stations, flight check-in kiosks, etc. Increasingly, we are also seeing these at non-grocery retail checkouts, doctor’s offices and in business lobbies. We’re also starting to see them embedded in changing rooms, hotel rooms and as retail displays.

The rise of the iPad and the touch tablet have certainly jump started this area, and we see no signs of adoption slowing down. Increasingly we’ll find that we are our own customer service representatives, cashiers and tellers. Interestingly the technology behind this is very similar to ecommerce — the real trick to using this technology successfully is how you use kiosks, how to protect against theft, and how to handle weird exception cases.

Kiosks will change how we interact with stores and services in the real-world.

6. Dynamic Content, Product and Price Personalization

We all use the internet. It’s great. Sometimes there is even good information on here (like this blog!). We all think of the internet or a webpage as a literal thing that we all have access to; but that’s not always the case. Your internet is very likely different than my internet. Using some advanced marketing tools, that webpage you and I are both on can dynamically change itself to be better suited to me.

We accept this as obvious on social media. Your Facebook should not be the same as my Facebook, that’s a given. But that is also increasingly true when it comes to both ecommerce and content sites [reference]. This gets creepy fast. Amazon knows I don’t comparison shop, therefore my prices are higher than if it profiled me as a bargain shopper. We generally believe prices should be fixed, but perhaps that was an artifact we assumed based on the reality that price adjustments in physical retail are hard to execute and so we think that’s not the way things should be in online retail either.

User-influenced dynamic content also impacts recommendations, search results, page content, banner ads, banner graphics and offers, calls to action, and many other elements throughout the internet.

7. Artificial Intelligence

There is a BIG battle happening for who emerges as the market dominator of artificial intelligence among the big names (Google, Microsoft, IBM, Amazon, etc). Even though Bill Gates, Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking all fear AI and future killer robots (no joke!
reference), these companies all see AI as a major part of their future.

AI is frankly amazing technology. We’ve seen AI write news articles [reference], AI win at Jeopardy and then go on to achieve other amazing things [reference], and AI powers the fancy assistants we all have in our pockets. AI and computational prediction is going to power the next big wave of apps and technologies. It has the potential that in 20 years, it’ll make our manually run computers look like typewriters.

8. Internet of Things

This one is a big deal. We’ve seen major investments over the last few years from all the big technology players in this idea of a connected future of physical things. The connected home, connected office, connected cars, connected appliances, connected locks, etc. Some of these connected objects are borderline ridiculous [reference]. Others are more meaningful and exciting, my favorite company in this space being Nest, which offers connected cameras, locks, security, etc.

A lot of these devices connect via your wi-fi system, but the big telecom companies are also looking to bring low-cost, pay-per-use cellular data usage to the internet of things. At GRAYBOX we’ve been able to work on
AT&T’s pay-per-use offerings and it’s been an exciting year to see what’s been developing in this space.

9. Wearable Technologies

Wearable tech is already here in a major way, so it’s not a new trend, but we definitely see the trend continuing to expand. The big market here is sensor technology (think Fitbit) where the primary output / display is your phone. You see fitness trackers, sleep tracker beds, medical monitors and others in this category.

But we’re also seeing lots of wearable tech where the device is also the screen and either touch or voice are the primary inputs. These are either general devices (Apple Watch or Android Wear mainly) or utility tech like the specialized watches from Garmin for climbing or exercise.

There is also movement in the wearable camera space. Snap (i.e. Snapchat) has their new
Spectacles, which look awesome; and there are some other startups trying to make a go of “always on, always recording” cameras or audio recorders.

I think the market hasn’t figured out what wearable tech should look like yet, but it’s a safe bet that we’ll see more evolution in this arena.

10. Self-Driving Transportation

This one is right around the corner and already in legal testing in multiple states and countries [reference]. Self driving cars and trucks are going to completely change the way we move ourselves and physical goods.

Freightliner already has the technology to have self-driving semi-trucks [reference]. Self-driving units are already on the road in the US. It’s safer than a human driver and cheaper to operate. Tech-driven transportation is not legal on a widespread basis yet. When it does become legal, we’ll likely see a jump in adoption and a corresponding large reduction in shipping costs and prices for all group-shipped products. This is great news for businesses and consumers, but bad news for the estimated 3.5M professional truck drivers in the US [reference].

Moreover, once legal self-driving cars are the mainstream, I think the way we purchase and think about transport will change dramatically. Transportation will be a service. Parking lots will be unnecessary. With fewer real estate dedicated to parked cars, we’ll probably see denser urban infill and less suburban sprawl. Uber says 70% of the cost of an Uber is the driver. In Portland, I can already take an Uber for $12 anywhere in town — so without a human driver, I’d be able to catch a ride across town for $4.

I have a 5-year-old and a 2-year-old. I wonder if they’ll even need to learn how to drive (like how I don’t know how to drive a stick).

11. Space Exploration

Space exploration is getting more exciting than it has since the Apollo missions in the 60’s and 70’s. This is due to two big drives:

We’re seeing a dramatic decrease in launch costs due to reusable rocket boosters from SpaceX (Elon Musk’s company) and Blue Origin (Jeff Bezo’s company). It’s awesome to witness, if you haven’t yet, SpaceX’s online videos of a rocket’s launch and then landing back on the launch pad. (Check it out on theSpaceX youtube channel)

Second, we’re seeing a commitment from both NASA and SpaceX to get humans to Mars by the 2030’s. SpaceX even has a plan to get one million people living on Mars in the next two decades.

The other big things in space exploration are the much improved sensors and overall technology we can now put to use. Scientists are finding new planets, galaxies and even signs of life.
It’s pretty damn exciting.

]]>2016-11-30T03:54:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/ecommerce-merchants-and-third-party-marketplaces
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/ecommerce-merchants-and-third-party-marketplaces#When:14:00:00Z
Many businesses are missing out on the biggest opportunity on the internet to reach their consumers directly. This opportunity is third-party marketplaces. They are currently doing to online retailers, what WalMart did to local mom and pop stores in the 80’s and 90’s. By virtue of their massive scale, they are building one-stop shops online that can help your business reach more customers, expand your brand presence and increase your profit margin.

The big boy in the US is Amazon.com

According to analysts [
reference], last year, Amazon sales accounted for 38 cents of every dollar spent on US ecommerce. Moreover, as the ecommerce segment grows, they will be capturing 51% of that growth. This remaining 38% is equal to the market share percentage totals from the next 21 biggest merchants combined — that includes big names like eBay, WalMart, BestBuy, and Sears among others. Altogether, almost 80% of every dollar spent on ecommerce stores is at the top 25 marketplaces; and that’s just the US market. Most of the big marketplaces are also international or have an international equivalent.

This presents an enormous challenge and opportunity for merchants. On one hand, they need to maintain their own ecommerce experience to reach consumers directly, but to be in front of customers where they are actually shopping as well, requires managing a marketplace presence on these third-party sites. Each marketplace has their own rules, as well as pros and cons for selling on the platform, but generally they are a pain as you have to play by their various and varying rules. Still the benefits can be quite significant if you’re willing to put up with the pain.

The benefits of selling on third-party marketplaces

First, the size of the addressable market is just massive compared to what your site can get. Looking at the top two marketplaces, Amazon.com had 183 million unique visitors in the US, and Walmart.com had 91.6 million unique visitors. Think about those numbers. The US population is 324 million people — so 56% of the US population visited Amazon.com last month. When you decide to not list your products on these sites, you’re missing out on the lion’s share of US ecommerce sales. If you sell on a marketplace, you won’t be totally in control of your customer’s experience, and you’ll need to pay sales fees to the marketplace, but you need to be where the masses are at. Moreover, once you add in the international potential… the market is just massive.

Secondly, considering the size of the addressable market, third-party marketplaces also represent a huge opportunity and challenge for brand building and brand management. On more marketplaces, each product is represented by one single page, regardless of the number of sellers. That means everyone contributes photos, video, descriptions and product specifications about the same product. If you are the manufacturer of a product, that content needs to be representative of your messaging and contain accurate product details in order for the majority of people to accurately understand your product. This is true regardless of if they purchase on the marketplace or not – they are learning about your brand and what you stand for. You can use third-party listings to control your brand presentation to a vast audience.

Finally, third-party marketplaces allow a merchant or manufacturer to actually make more money than at traditional retail. Most marketplaces charge a 10-20% sales fee for all products sold on the platform, but they also take care of the item fulfillment and transaction. For manufacturers who normally sell at wholesale to retailers, you can sell direct and claim a significantly higher percent of margin than you do currently. If you are used to paying outside reps, this route can also be in your favor as you are reducing the number of middlemen. For merchants, you can reduce your sales costs by letting the marketplaces handle the transactions, fulfillment and logistics.

The opportunity for each brand and your products is huge — you can get in front of more people, expand your brand’s reach and increase your profits in the process. The future belongs to both direct-to-consumer ecommerce as well as third-party marketplaces. Stop ignoring most of your market and start controlling your marketplace presentation.

]]>2016-11-08T14:00:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/whisky-friday-whisky-sour
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/whisky-friday-whisky-sour#When:13:00:00ZToday, I will teach you, dear wanderer, how to make the greatest cocktail in the world. It’s simultaneously delicious, easy to drink and strong — two of these will set your worries aside and ease the heavy burdens of adulthood from your heart.

The whisky sour is one of my bellwether drinks. If the bar makes it like my instructions below, keep ordering them; if they pull out margarita mix, switch to beer immediately (I’m looking at you McMenamin’s!).

You’ll need:

Whisky. Don’t use anything that high quality, but don’t do the sad burny stuff. Jim Beam, Jack or Buffalo Trace will do great.

Now this next step is SUPER important. You need to put on the lid to your shaker, then shake the HELL out of that cocktail. You’re aiming for 40-50% dilution of the ice. Shake it for like 30 seconds, and I mean shake it hard. Your shoulder should hurt and your hand should be numb by the end of this.

Pour everything into a cocktail glass. You should have about ¼ inch of delicious egg white foam at the top. If you want to be fancy, do another few drops of angostura bitters on the foam and make a design with it.

This same basic recipe also works great with gin or vodka, but I think the punch of bourbon works best. Enjoy and stay safe out there.

Technology is a tool that we can utilize to improve processes across all industries. It’s being realized in a variety of ways in a variety of arenas – travel, communications, healthcare, and more. Considering this, there’s no reason for us to be stuck in the dark ages when it comes to one of our country’s most foundational areas of interest – voters indicating their preferences through the democratic process. The original bureaucracy and governing systems that were designed at the birth of our nation were intended for a citizenry that was a small fraction of our current population’s size. It’s unrealistic to think these same systems would be optimized for the diverse demographics and large population of our country today.

Precision, Speed & Safety

Internet voting has inconveniences, risks and concerns. So do other voting systems such as punch cards with hanging chads, mail-in voting ballots, and in-person polling stations which are only open at specific times of day and are monitored by minimally-trained volunteers. As our society has matured, we’ve accepted that when precision, speed and safety are required, we bring machines and computers in to help out. They help remove the very large potential for human error. This is why bank vaults are monitored with electronic and online systems, and why the stock exchange has gone digital. It’s why surgeons use robotic arms and health institutions store data digitally. And it’s why professional pilots who work for commercial airlines turn on auto-pilot to safely land jet-planes full of people.

These highly trained professionals use incredibly complex digital tools and systems because in all these areas, the task at hand absolutely must be done right. We wouldn’t feel right having underpaid administrative staff using outdated surgery tools to perform an operation. But we do trust the selection of future governing bodies of our nation to a similarly underpaid (or unpaid!) administrators and volunteers using outdated tools to collect the votes of our populace. The future of our nation is in this person’s hands – someone who might be smart but has received very little training or education with regard to the task at hand, is not adequately financially incentivised, and who is using sub-par, outdated tools.

Benefits of Internet Voting

Some positives available to us through internet voting:

Higher precision in successfully recording a person’s intended vote – internet systems can offer a summary results screen showing the voter who they’ve selected to confirm that the entity recording the vote (the computer) has successfully “heard” what the voter is trying to say. Paper voting systems and punch cards lack this. This presents it’s own security concerns regarding the auditability mechanisms required to prove that what’s displayed to the user is actually what is recorded and included in the vote.

Reduce costs and turnaround time associated with absentee ballots – every election state and local governments spend tax dollars on accommodating absentee citizen with paper ballots – sending, collecting, and processing – who might be deployed military or overseas for other reasons.

Enable largely disenfranchised populations the ability to vote – our voting system is very difficult for some segments of the population such as the blind or otherwise handicapped, those who work long or unorthodox hours, who belong to social groups who are unwelcome in their home neighborhood, or young adults who might move frequently.

Provide a more voter-friendly solution for districts that offer preferential voting – in preferential voting the voter ranks all possible candidate choices in order of preference instead of selecting only one candidate – like in San Francisco. The voter selection process could be much improved if it was digital, and the burden to admin in tallying the votes would be dramatically reduced.

Reducing Risks

Advocacy for and against internet voting is focusing on the wrong issue. People are obsessing about an internet voting system getting hacked. However the issue at hand is not finding a 100% failsafe system – that’s unrealistic. It’s about lowering the risk of the current system and improving it.

Our current voting system is riddled with opportunities for error and influence. The conventional antiquated technology and human-based systems in use fail all the time. However we turn a blind eye to them because we consider them to be acceptable risks that are unmanageable.

Investing in Democracy

Of all the things our government could spend billions of dollars on, you’d think that the voting system required for democracy to exist would be of vital importance. Instead we have largely rudimentarily-trained and minimally-educated, under-paid professionals (sometimes volunteers!) using unreliable and outdated tools to gather the opinions of our populace – the foundation of our democracy.

If we want to improve our voting system, the US government is going to have to make an investment. Just like other industries like healthcare, travel, communications and manufacturing who have sunk major sums of money to invest in top digital tools, the US’s voting system and the federal government are going to have to make a similar investment to leap from the 1700’s into today’s modern digital age.

Other governments and voting entities are adopting internet voting – the US is lagging behind. The governments of Norway, Switzerland, India, UK, Canada, and Estonia are all using internet voting. Here in the US, we have actually offered internet voting since 2010 to overseas citizens via the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) but officials are highly resistant to offering this to our stateside citizens – even though in theory we have increased control over all variables as opposed to overseas. The incredibly high-profile Oscars and Grammies have also adopted internet voting. (
This doc from the US government has some interesting additional information on overseas electronic voting.)

Why Are People Against Internet Voting?

From the grumblings reported by the media, we can surmise that the main objection to internet voting is that it changes the way things have always been done. We’ve heard politicians say that the system that voted them in office worked for them, so why should they change it?

We’ve heard folks who are uneducated about digital security measures conjecture that Russia is going to hack into the system and rig voting to be in their favor. However this objection can easily be mollified with a technical implementations like WORM drives, mixnets, zero-knowldege proofs, and other advanced cryptographic protocols that, when used properly, can safekeep systems.

There’s also a possibility that the “experts” protesting the most against internet voting are interested in the inclusion or exclusion of demographic groups which correlate to the desire to vote online. Some countries make voting a mandatory action and fine anyone who doesn’t vote (Australia for example). In this case, it doesn’t favor one party over another to make voting easier since everyone is going to vote anyway. However in our country, the likelihood that citizens will vote is a very real way to influence election results. It’s possible that those who are outspoken against internet voting receive support from interest groups who are happy to keep disenfranchised demographic groups from gaining easier access to being heard at elections.

Final Thoughts

Since security is the main concern voiced by dissenters, we think it’s important to clarify that internet voting is not a promise of perfect security. It’s better security. There are real concrete problems that internet voting solves at a lower risk than what is currently used in our voting system. Not zero risk, but less risk – because with any system there’s always risk.

How do we counter this risk? Build a state-of-the art security and storage system for voting, then hire highly trained professionals to implement and manage it. The more secure the system, the more difficult and cost-prohibitive it would be for nefarious parties to compromise the system. There are far more reliable, less difficult, and less expensive methods of swinging an election – like donating money to one of the political parties. There will always be entities seeking to influence an election, but if we make security compromise the most difficult way of achieving this, they will be more likely to turn to more legitimate tactics.

]]>2016-11-01T00:08:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/walmart-helps-small-businesses-by-buying-jet.com
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/walmart-helps-small-businesses-by-buying-jet.com#When:17:44:00Z
An ironic twist: how Walmart helped small businesses when buying Jet.com

On August 8th, 2016, Walmart Stores Inc. made a bold decision to purchase Jet.com for North of $3 billion. The exact deal, with about $3 billion in cash and $300 million in Walmart shares, could become the day when a legitimate competitor to Amazon.com was born. (Wall Street Journal)

It’s important to emphasize, when I say “born” I mean exactly that – and definitely not arrived.

Let’s take stock of today’s ecommerce landscape at the start of Q4 2016. Amazon.com is crushing everyone. Whether it is Amazon’s command over the first search for a product online (55% of searches), the fact that 94% of consumers plan to shop on Amazon this holiday season, or that half of US households regularly shop on their marketplace – Amazon commands a huge lead in ecommerce. (BloomReach)

With this much traffic on their site, Amazon is reaping the benefits of the billions of dollars they have invested over the past 20 years in growing their marketplace and distribution system. But what does that mean for everyone else? Even though Amazon allows companies to list their products on the Amazon Marketplace, history is full of examples of when one company had a crushing lead over their competitors and the imbalance of power had a crippling effect on competitors. What would happen if Amazon decided to stop allowing companies to sell on their marketplace? Or if they increased their fees to improve their profitability? It’s these and many more risks that make the news of Walmart buying Jet.com so important.

For those of you who have never heard of Jet.com the short story is that Jet.com is an ecommerce marketplace that uses proprietary algorithms to attempt to provide greater savings for goods than other ecommerce marketplaces. Jet.com has burst onto the ecommerce scene and has already surpassed $1 billion in sales since it launched in July of 2015. (Business Insider)

While $1 billion in sales is peanuts compared to Amazon’s sales, Jet’s technology and the leadership that ecommerce guru Marc Lore provides, have created a compelling opportunity for Walmart – a brand that needs all the assistance they can get to reignite lagging online sales. Even with billions of dollars in investments, Walmart has struggled to continue to grow their online sales in recent years and has fallen further behind Amazon. (Geekwire)

Now that all has the potential to change. As Marc Lore’s presence influences both Jet.com and Walmart.com, and he is backed by Walmart’s monetary war chest and distribution network, both entities stand a fighting chance in the future of ecommerce. As a digital consulting firm providing web development in Portland, we’re very excited to see what becomes of this new development in the years to come – particularly for companies in ecommerce. Time will have to pass before we know if this move made the difference for either company in trying to keep up with Amazon, but without each other, neither company stands much chance.

]]>2016-10-25T17:44:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/a-digital-first-world
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/a-digital-first-world#When:20:36:00Z
My favorite podcast is
Exponent, an in-depth topical business discussion between two wise technology and strategy business gurus, Ben Thompson and James Allworth. It’s a great listen every week as they look at various tech industry actions from the previous week and break down the strategic impact on various companies.

The podcast that Exponent released a few weeks ago, Move on From the 80’s is a lengthy discussion on Oracle’s new positioning from a traditional software product to a software as a services company. In it, Ben succinctly summarized one of my core beliefs about the current changes in our business environment. I’ve transcribed the relevant clip below. (Note that this is a transcription of their spoken words, so I’ve cleaned up the text slightly to remove unclear direct objects, and sentence fragments. Emphasis added is my own.)

26:24 (Ben) - “You think about the companies of the future, and by future — a lot of large companies today — they are [now] tech companies. And remember tech companies are not just necessarily hardcore technology companies, we talk about the “Tech Industry” — Is Uber a tech company? Is AirBnB a tech company? Is Dollar Shave Club (which Unilever acquired) a tech company? We cover them. We write about them. The news about them is on techMeme, but Dollar Shave Club, is that a tech company?

26:52 (James) Yeah, it’s a good question.

26:56 (Ben). Well,
it’s becoming a meaningless question. Because the reality is that all companies will be tech companies. Because everything is going to have to work with our phones, with ecommerce, and with the world around them. The very way society works and how we interact with everything is changing with technology as the air we breathe. And you aren’t going to build a company without air. And so you have these completely new kind of companies that are growing up with [technology as their air].

27:41 (Ben) You think about it. What’s the big advantage of software? Software can be anything you want it to be. It’s infinitely malleable, and it’s what makes it so powerful… And if you are starting a company, why would you not want systems and processes that are not supporting your companies, but are the very fabric of your company — why would you not want [your technology] perfectly created and attuned for you and for your needs. Are you going to want to go to Oracle and pick one of their [new] 30 [cloud-based] applications where they already pre-decided all these things for you? No! You’ll want to have what works and is EXACTLY right for you. And is that hard? Is that slow and buggy in the beginning? Is it hard today to build out your own infrastructure? Of course it is — but what’s the trend?… In the long-run it will be the only way to build a successful company.

I agree with Ben’s comments 100%, and appreciate the articulation of the argument. It furthers a fundamental concept upon which GRAYBOX is based — the world is evolving around digital technologies and businesses must adapt to these changes in order to stay competitive. We are currently in a sea of change wherein interconnected, digital technologies are replacing and obsoleting the old ways of doing business.

“Technology” is not just an industry, it is becoming the baseline foundation upon which all industries must operate. The foundational requirements of technical fluency within each industry may vary, but the trend is clear — a company without the correct foundation can’t keep up and ultimately can’t compete. A healthcare company without electronic medical records will fail, a hospitality company without online bookings will fail, product manufacturers now need a presence in multiple marketplaces and sales channels, B2B companies need a robust and powerful CRM, and on and on for every industry.

Great technology is now table stakes.

Every industry now has some technology that is critical to their success and in the future “every company will be a tech company”. I think about how already technology has transformed traditionally non-technical industries like transportation, warehousing, agriculture and fitness (among other industries). Perhaps more importantly, what’s yet to come? I don’t think we understand enough how much today our lives are impacted by technological improvements and the disruption of traditional processes. Most businesses haven’t yet caught up to the technologies available today, and already you can see the seeds of the next epoch of technology in our lives; virtual reality, augmented reality, self-driving cars, wearables & pervasive trackers, the connected home, internet of things, and dynamic content personalization (among others) are all going to change everything yet again.

So, the big question to ask yourself, Is your business aligned with the new reality? To succeed in the digital-first world, most importantly, you’ll need a new way of thinking and a willingness to adapt to a new market. You’ll need flexible and optimized software systems, good data and robust analytics, a keen understanding of your customers and what they care about, a deep care for usability and design, and the technical aptitude to keep your business systems modern, fast and secure. That’s a tall order, especially for the non-technical.

For GRAYBOX, our core promise is that we are your partners in a digital-first world. We’re helpful, collaborative, responsible, dependable, experienced, thorough and effective. We have a deep experience in technology and know how to apply these technologies to transform your business. We’ll help you modernize your business and be partners in your future digital success.

Don’t let the future pass you by. The changes we are seeing will be as vast and consequential as the industrial revolution — everything is changing and it’s changing fast — we can help.

]]>2016-10-13T20:36:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/web-design-trend-predictions-of-2017
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/web-design-trend-predictions-of-2017#When:16:26:00Z
We’re quickly approaching the end of 2016, with about three months left until we ring in the new year! Here at GRAYBOX, we always have our eye out when new design movements occur, and this blog post is a curation of the most prevalent trends that will likely continue through to the next year.

Overall Prediction: More Immersive Experiences

Users are no longer simply captivated by a beautiful photo – they want to be led through an immersive digital experience when visiting a website. Following the trend I mentioned in last year’s
2016 Web Design Trends blog post, we will be seeing more well-thought out and unique user experiences, with an added layer of storytelling thrown into the mix.

Prediction 1: Responsive web design is here to stay

Mobile devices are not going away anytime soon, and any website owner who has not optimized their website for mobile by now is already light-years behind their competitors. To stay current within the web sphere, this prediction isn’t merely a trend, but a best practice.

Google does a great job of taking different screen sizes (and bandwidths!) into account. When first arriving on the page, the desktop experience loops a short video clip of the different national parks, giving a sneak peek into what the user is about to experience. When viewed on a phone, the user is presented with the same exact information as the desktop experience, but the interactivity has been pared back to account for limited mobile data plans, as the short video clip has been removed. Additionally, an option to change the resolution of the video is included on the desktop experience, while on mobile, this ability has been removed.

As the user dives deeper into the website, they are presented with a short introduction video that highlights the wonders of the country’s national parks, with entry points to the five different parks afterwards. Personally, I was blown away by how well the video clips render across the different screen sizes - the captured view renders flawlessly on both portrait and landscape modes on mobile devices, as well as on desktop.

The real magic happens once the user starts exploring each national park. Take for example, the Kenai Fjords National Park. After the short introductory video clip, the user is immersed in a truly 360 degree experience across all screen sizes. On desktop, clicking and dragging the screen rotates the viewpoint, while on mobile, the user simply has to tilt and move the phone around to become engaged. I wouldn’t expect less from Google!

Conventional rollover effects that were popular circa 2012 will be experiencing a drop-off. Instead, we’ve recently been seeing cleverly-employed hover effects applied to imagery and buttons to indicate an element is clickable.

Take for example, Hello Monday’s website. Upon arriving on the homepage, the user will quickly find out that moving their mouse cursor around directly affects the background imagery. It provides the user with a more tactile and interactive sensation, creating a more sensory-driven, interactive experience. When hovering over the up/down arrows towards the bottom right of the screen, the shape of the arrows change. Again, this provides a more tactile feeling while browsing the website. The layers of shifting content provide the illusion of depth – an engaging experience as the web is a strictly two-dimensional environment (no matter how much parallax and drop shadows are sprinkled in!).

The same thing can be seen on other websites such as:

Kalios – The rollover effects of their buttons and products bring an added sense of “life,” while on the initial homepage.

When you hover over products, they respond by moving up a bit, as if you were in the store picking them up to examine them.

The homepage’s “Scroll Down” text and animation of a small oil drop invokes a sense of freshness and fun, while grabbing the user’s attention to encourage exploration of the site (in this case, scrolling down).

As a product detail page loads, elements appear and shift into place in a staggered, intentional way – as if a fancy waiter is setting your table with a flourish. These small touches provide extra polish and personality to their website.

Draft Design & Strategy Co. – Lower down on the homepage, images plus an arrow move to the right and invoke a sense of “movement” and “progression to the next page.” This makes sense, as clicking on the image takes the user to a new page and elements load from left to right – the same direction the image moves in upon hover. The use of the right arrow coupled with the image movement reiterate the sense of moving forward. A subtle touch, but nicely conveyed.

These subtle cues bring forth a more immersive, experiential feeling when browsing the websites above, as if the user is discovering and being rewarded with hidden gems during their encounter with these websites.

Prediction 3: Captivating media to introduce users to a website

For maximum impact, big hero images are being outshined by animated features. If you’re seeking a powerful first impression, why not utilize something that truly makes a statement? Assets like animated graphics, short video clips, or animated text are compelling alternatives to the prototypical hero shot, and provide a richer and more unique experience.

Kalios does an excellent job quickly telling their brand story through a series of short clips stitched together and played on the homepage. The clips are excerpts from a longer video and capture the essence of Kalios’ process of creating high-quality olive oils from start to finish, all without the need to scroll to read their promotional content! If the user chooses to navigate away from the clips and watch the entire video, a handy link at the top right is provided to view it.

Epiphany – This homepage introduces an added layer of creativity and personality by utilizing both text and graphic animations in their hero block. These provide clues as to what brand personality users can expect to see on the website – a fun and clever tone with a punch of character.

Prediction 4: Use of graphics to bring added depth and complexity to an otherwise flat, static experience

Related to the prediction above, I’m glad to see more and more websites striving to create a layered, three-dimensional-inspired experience on an otherwise flat surface.

Invstr – Here is a great example of a company using animated graphics to draw the user into an immersive experience online. The URL directs users to a landing page which gives an artful tour of their mobile app (prediction 4), with an option to skip it if desired. Navigating past the video to the homepage is where we see a lot of interactive elements come into play. Animated text is cleverly applied to provide an interesting approach to messaging – the two phrases, Take Charge and Make Change, are switched between by animating just the two characters that are different between the two phrases. A dynamic graphic akin to gentle waves or a topographical map is fixed to the bottom, adding to the overall movement of the page.

From the homepage described above, scrolling or clicking on the “Scroll Down” button automatically redirects the user to the “Features” section where users can view the various features related to the app. At the bottom of the
Features page, an exciting animation encourages users to download the app.

Draft – This site creates movement with a different method – an animated text event is applied to the handwritten subhead when both initially landing on the homepage, and then again when scrolling down the page, mimicking a live handwriting action. This subtle touch evokes a tactile and “raw” experience – a nice counterpoint to the large blocks of imagery and rectangular backgrounds on the site.

Prediction 5: Refined Usage of Parallax

Tied to Prediction 5, the use of refined parallax effects are apparent as a trend that is still feeling fresh.

Parallax has come a long way since its inception. Simply put, parallax is a type of effect applied to the speed and movement of background imagery. The background of the website moves at a different speed than the rest of page, thereby mimicking layers of depth on the page. Back when it first became popular, websites were utilizing it in such bizarre ways that seizures could potentially be initiated just by scrolling down page content. As this trend has matured, we now see it applied in more refined ways.

As can be seen on Kitamura Makura’s website, the website employs an interesting use of parallax when scrolling down the page to add a sense of depth to an otherwise plain, flat screen. Upon scrolling down the page, an animated timestamp appears with a person frozen behind the timestamp, presumably asleep. A moving wave pattern alludes to the brain waves a person emits while sleeping. As the user continues to scroll down the page, the timestamp changes from night to morning, while the person shifts from one position to another (mimicking tossing / turning during sleep), all the while maintaining a steady brain wave pattern. The end goal of the website is to sell a simple pillow, but Kitamura Makura’s website is far from a typical e-commerce experience.

On Draft’s homepage, while scrolling down, large blocks of color behind the body content slowly move at a different speed when compared to the content in front of it. The speed and transitions applied to the movement alludes to a slowly moving, yet dainty and airy element, especially considering the size of the block that is moving (large flat rectangle). This is another example of sophisticated parallax creating an immersive user experience for the visitor.

Prediction 6: Pushing to Break Out of Conventional Grid Format

As more websites are catching up to implement responsive web design, we see a lot of repetitive patterns appearing when downsizing from desktop to mobile. It’s refreshing to see websites that challenge the emerging status quo, such as Hello Monday or Draft Design & Strategy, who use the responsive format in an unconventional way. The websites are definitely implementing a grid structure as a foundation, but as the transition from desktop to mobile occurs, elements shift/shrink in a thoughtful manner, alluding to the great care and foresight the designers and developers had when transitioning through the different breakpoints.

SMALLER ASSET-DRIVEN TRENDS

Relieving interstitial anxiety through the use of animations / loader graphics

As designers start employing more fancy animations, videos, and other elements that add load-time to a website, a good solution to alleviate the build-up of interstitial anxiety. Interstitial anxiety is the temporary state of suspense a user experiences between an initiated action (clicking a link to a designer’s hefty portfolio site) and its response (site load).

Cross Me, a Japanese online dating website, uses a clever loader graphic - two separate colored circles on either end of the screen slide towards the middle until they meet to form one circle. A percentage to completion is also added to provided further context. This simple, yet clever animation alludes to what the website’s main intent is – matchmaking.

To help relieve interstitial anxiety, Hello Monday employs a simple text message that counts down until the page is completely loaded.

Draft also employs a page load animation – a simple rectangle with an animation applied to imply progress.

Again, these graphics are a small, subtle touch. However, without utilizing forewarning messages such as these, the user may think the site is broken or built poorly simply due to it loading slowly, thereby diminishing or even breaking their feelings of trust and reliability towards the site. Can you imagine how many client leads could potentially be lost for Hello Monday or Draft without the use of this loader graphic? Potential repercussions can be that severe!

“Scroll Down” Notification

One of the biggest usability concerns with a full-screen web experience is that users will miss out on content “
below the fold.” As mentioned in an earlier blog post, I encourage you to reference the article "The Myth of the Page Fold: Evidence From User Testing" by Joe Leech from CX Partners UK regarding this. As more people gain access to the web, the more they become accustomed to the concept that a web page is not a static screen, but a dynamic page that can indeed be scrolled through. Still, to accommodate for less tech-savvy users, many websites like Kalios, Hello Monday, Epiphany, Susa Adventures, and Draft employ some form of a notification to indicate important content exists below the fold, aiding in usability for less advanced web users.

Fixed Nav

I’m glad this trend is becoming more popular, and it’s interesting to see how different websites employ the use of fixed navigation. Big names like Nike, Adidas, Pinterest, and Facebook all employ the use of this, which leads mass market non-savvy web users to become familiarized with this design feature. Almost all of the websites mentioned above also employ the use of a fixed nav, with some websites even going so far as to hide menu items by default within a menu (“hamburger”) button. The jury is still out whether or not this is a good UX practice for all digital experiences, especially when applied to desktop experiences, but as more users engage with the web on their mobile devices, they become familiarized with the invokable menu through the use of the menu button.

Diffused Drop Shadows

There has been a particular trend occurring lately regarding the application of drop shadows on elements. Typically this visual effect is paired with flat graphics (but it can also be applied to images) this type of drop shadow mimics a more diffused look rather than the typical drop shadows used in previous years. To find more information on how to make your own diffused drop shadow, take a gander at this how-to post on the Invision App’s blog.

As always, we at GRAYBOX are eager to see what new trends, experiences, and movements 2017 will bring for us, and what trends will fade out within the next year and beyond!

If you’re interested in refreshing your organization’s digital experience, we’d love to chat about what you have in mind and see how we can help. Also, if you’re a designer or developer looking to join a forward-thinking firm, we’re always looking for good people – give us a shout.

Being a kid born in the 80's and having spent my formative years in the 90's, it is quite surreal that Virtual Reality has finally become a reality. After three decades of it being a work of "fiction", it's now here. The future is now! The idea of VR is not a new concept. I can still vividly recall the rad
Nintendo Virtual Boy commercials along with the classic 90's sci-fi movies The Lawnmower Man, Johnny Mnemonic, and The Matrix. Regardless of the hunger for VR being at a fever pitch, the hardware never was able to truly produce the concept people craved and truly immerse the user. Until now...

A month ago, GRAYBOX purchased us a brand new HTC Vive. I'd like to take this moment to preface that I have had my head in the sand when it comes to VR the past five years or so. I've watched the Oculus Rift hype from the sidelines only – besides doing the Rollercoaster simulation, I've not touched the things. From the first moment I experienced the Vive, I was completely mindblown. I immediately knew what had always been missing from previous VR iterations and why I think we are on the verge of ushering in a new paradigm in technology; the controllers. The controllers turned what was once a planetarium-like experience into something tangible, something real. It gave the user an experience.

Being a UX nerd, I immediately was drawn to how seamless the interactions with the environment were. As I played through a few rounds of Space Pirate Trainer, I began to think about how little I had to think to accomplish a goal. One of the main UX mantras is to make the user do as little thinking as possible. Every action needs to feel natural and intuitive. Thinking beyond shooting drones down in space, my mind began to think about how VR could impact other aspects of everyday life and how a new chapter of UX will need to be explored.

Imagine using an ecommerce platform in a VR space. What does the environment look like? What kind of actions will the user be able to do? Instead of clicking a button, what if a user will one day be able to pick the item up, inspect it in a 3D space and then physically place the item into a cart?

Applying 2D principles to a 3D world

One of the major shifts in UX thinking will be accounting for the dimension of depth. Currently, every web-based user experience is rendered on a 2 dimensional surface (ie, the screen). Some design trends like Google's
Material Design have began tapping into the integration of UI items having depth to them. These principles could be roughly translatable into the 3 dimensional space but Material Design is more of a pseudo-depth, in that it still lives in the land of the Flatlanders. While not the answer, Material Design is, in my opinion, a good starting point to this type of thinking.

To take it beyond the current, known trends, Digital UX designers will need to start transitioning into thinking more like Product Designers. Think of the people who design chairs, door handles, and other tangible objects that live in our current real life 'reality'. The book
The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman will become more relevant than ever once VR UX becomes the norm.

User immersion and body tracking

A key feature the Vive introduced is the ability to track the user within a confined space. Currently, the space is limiting but true movement can be achieved instead of via the use of a joystick or control pad. Having the physicality of movement at our disposal, what kind of doors open from a UX perspective? Going back to our ecommerce example above, what if a traditional website converted into a virtual storefront in which a user can walk around and explore the space. No more pages, nor pagination. Just endless aisles of products that can be physically walked through.

Haptic Feedback or bust

Although not a new technology, haptic feedback is critical to the success of anything virtual from a UX perspective. Having your sense of touch triggered when performing an action makes that action "real" and when your brain receives that sensation, your actions have been validated. Currently, the Vive has a very elementary haptic system. Looking to science fiction for a glimpse into the future, the book Ready Player One by Ernest Cline describes the future of haptics and what will eventually need to become a reality if VR is to become a viable UX option. In the book, the user feels beyond vibrations. The haptic suits mimic things like resistance, temperature, and liquid.

In conclusion, we UX designers are standing on the edge of a cliff looking down into a dark abyss that is the unknown future of VR and its impact on, not only gaming and entertainment but, our lives as a whole. I think it's time to take a leap and see what kind of awesomeness we can create and discover.

]]>2016-10-07T16:34:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/the-important-role-of-user-personas-in-ux
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/the-important-role-of-user-personas-in-ux#When:18:39:00ZWebsites and apps are a form of communication between an individual, organization, or business and a user.

Because this communication is largely one-sided (the user is reading what the website or app is communicating but not vice versa) as creators we have a responsibility to anticipate what the user might say if they were able to engage in a conversation with the website or app. This accomplishes two things:

It adds value for the user since you are anticipating their needs. This will establish you as an expert on the topic at hand, contribute to them feeling you are helpful and useful, and lead them to form positive associations with your brand.

By extending the length and depth of the “conversation” between your website or app and the user, you are increasing the amount of time they spend on your site and their level of engagement. The longer the interaction the greater the likelihood you will convert your user to take the actions you’d like them to – such as request a quote, call your business, or make a purchase.

How can we anticipate the user’s needs? By placing ourselves in their shoes.

Anyone knows who has ever experienced exquisite service at a hotel or restaurant, has been doted on by a loving family member or significant other, or who has received the “perfect holiday gift” – magic happens when someone anticipates our needs. Guest service professionals at white-glove hotels are taught to read cues provided by guests and make suggestions that might be helpful to those guests - would you like help carrying your bags? Will you be needing transportation to the airport tomorrow when you check out? Will you be needing a crib in your room for that young child? You mentioned it’s your anniversary celebration – can we bring up champagne this evening? This ability to read minds is not rocket science, but it does come from careful consideration of the guest’s situation and putting yourself in their shoes.

One of the Ritz Carlton’s three Credo’s is: “The Ritz-Carlton experience enlivens the senses, instills well-being, and fulfills even the unexpressed wishes and needs of our guests.”

If we carry these lessons over into the UX space, it makes sense that if we want to provide a meaningful, helpful, and exquisite user experience we simply need to put ourselves in the shoes of the user. This is where User Personas come in.

A strong User Persona gives you a glimpse into the mindset of the user, their motivations and concerns, and helps you envision the user as a real person. If a website or app is going to succeed at informing and/or persuading a user, it’s vital to know where this person is already coming from.

Treat different people differently. Anything else is a compromise.

– Seth Godin

User Personas can and should inform the design of our user experience.

Typically a website or app has 1-5 different user types who should have User Personas defined for them. While there will be some overlap between the motivations from persona to persona, each User Persona will have a top concern and a top motivation. It’s important that the homepage address these for each User Persona. They might be addressed by overall design look and feel, top navigation structure, the main image, or a content area – but it’s important that they all are addressed.

The other motivations and concerns of your User Personas should also be answered on your site, in sections or areas that are easily found through your site navigation. As you can see, User Personas can shape the UX of your design and make it into something that is truly created with your user in mind. When you do this, you are anticipating their needs. They will feel like you understand where they’re coming from. They will feel that your brand is knowledgeable and straightforward because they didn’t have to dig to get their questions answered. They’ll spend more time on your site because they’re having a conversation with your content – this is more engaging too because as they make their way through their own internal dialogue, the answers to their questions are readily available.

]]>2016-09-29T18:39:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/are-ctos-a-thing-of-the-past
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/are-ctos-a-thing-of-the-past#When:16:25:00ZIn many ways, the title of CTO is a thing of the past.

At this point in our economy’s digital growth path, to have a business means to be digital. Electricity was a novelty when it was first introduced, but as it became part of mainstream adoption products stopped touting themselves as “electric hair dryers” and “electric washing machines” and just became hair dryers and washing machines. We see a similar thing happening with online and digital technology today.

Startups who do the bulk of their business online are dropping the “e” and “i” from their names which previously designated them as digital-focused companies. Digitally-focused products and business tools are no longer a novelty, and staff members are increasingly expected to be proficient in tech too. As technology infuses itself into every corner of our economy, we’re reaching the point where at a company level technology prowess is spread across a team, not merely owned by just one C-level expert with “technology” in their title.

How Are CTO’s Adapting?

As tech saturates the business landscape, the role of the CTO is evolving. Many companies are taking the responsibilities associated with the title and dispersing them over teams instead of localizing them onto one person. This team can be internal or external, and might consist of folks such as senior developers, digital strategists, or engineers. If external, these responsibilities are handled by a digital consulting firm.

Traditionally, the CTO is responsible for having expertise in the core competencies of the company, business strategy, and the technologies needed to bring the business success. However we are seeing a growing trend that instead of relying on a single CTO to be an all-knowing and powerful wizard in tech, some forward-thinking businesses are relying on teams of subject matter experts instead. In fact, instead of hiring a CTO, businesses are hiring firms like GRAYBOX to cover these needs. Companies can't be built by solitary heroes or wizards – process and wisdom that drive towards solutions are what turn great ideas into stable and sustainable products. It’s uncommon for a single person to have enough experience to cover all the tech needs of a company. It’s more realistic to engage a unified team of senior consultants to cover all the bases. In addition to benefitting the business, this sharing of responsibility has also helped prevent “CTO Melt-down” – what happens when too much responsibility and tasks are placed on a solo CTO’s shoulders.

CTO’s Helping CTO’s

This shift in CTO roles within the business sector has also encouraged CTO’s to band together to help one another to meet these challenges head-on. The technology community has always been a collaborative one and we’re seeing more and more networking and co-learning opportunities pop up.

One such group is 7 CTO’s. Their website explains, “After more than two years spent meeting 300+ CTOs in four cities across the United States, it was clear [to the founders of 7 CTO’s that] there was an urgent need for leaders in technology strategy and execution to transcend their silos, and form close-knit communities of their peers and mentors.”

Our Director of Business Consulting, Mike Joyce, became a member and GRAYBOX as well as our clients have benefitted. You may notice that his title is not CTO. That is because at GRAYBOX, clusters of our team members cover the needs that traditionally a company’s CTO were imagined to handle. Mike meets monthly with six other tech professionals who are each currently tasked by their companies to function as CTO’s once did, even if not by title. Meetings are facilitated by an 8th person from the 7 CTO’s parent organization and include professional-oriented advice and collaboration around work, tech news, and a monthly professional growth topic related to tech.

GRAYBOX: CTO 2.0

We imagine a future for the CTO role in which businesses consider their CTO team member to be a strategic liaison who connects their company with a cadre of digital consultants and tools, much like a CMO. CMO’s engage PR firms, design firms, marketing firms, and lead a varied team of internal and external staff to cover the marketing needs of a company. In the absence of a CMO, a business will engage a marketing firm to cover this need. GRAYBOX sees the role of CTO moving in this direction. Gone are the days of businesses expecting their CTO to function as the be-all end-all of everything tech – it’s simply not realistic in this day and age. We look forward to partnering with more businesses and their CTO’s to ensure companies are receiving the top-notch digital strategy and business consulting needed to reach growth goals. To the future!

Have you ever used a piece of software that advertised itself as “simple”, “easy-to-use”, “non-technical”, or “out-of-the-box-ready”? Typically, these applications attempt to sell you on the concept that the creators have preconfigured the majority of your needs, and the time and financial savings of not needing to customize the application is worth the sacrifice of unique systems built for your business.

While this works for some companies with some business requirements (Quickbooks comes to mind), attempting to use a non-customizable and restrictive Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system usually presents more hassle than time savings.

Some business operations are very consistent between organizations regardless of their specific business requirements, but CRM systems need to be very specific to each company. Consider the different types of sales funnels organizations have. In some organizations, the sales process may have ten well-established steps that a new customer goes through while with another company it might be a loose two-step funnel.

Each of these steps in the funnel could have unique requirements, conditions for qualification, and variables to consider. Because of their unique nature, CRM systems become ineffective if not configurable to special business requirements. Enter Salesforce, a CRM system built with almost limitless customizable functionality.

Customizations Within Salesforce

Two commonly-used customizable features within Salesforce are the field creation and page layout functions. In Salesforce, the standard naming convention for different customers in the sales process are:

Leads

Contacts

Accounts

These three groupings are meant to track how a new customer moves through the sales funnel, beginning as a Lead, and becoming a Contact linked to a business Account within the system. By using the customizable field creation process and the page layout function, companies using Salesforce can make the Lead, Contact, and Account forms work for their unique business requirements.

Custom Fields - An Example

Salesforce allows you to capture your unique business data and store it in custom fields. As an example, if an organization knows that all of their Leads originate from four specific sources, they can customize the Lead Source Field on the Lead page in order to track their Lead’s source accurately. Even more, a company can set up the Lead Source Field as a Pick-List, so that only certain predetermined values can be selected as the source of the lead.

By using a customized Pick-List, a company can achieve two things – data consistency and accuracy – so that all relevant information is kept, but there is no user-error to corrupt the data over time. While the previous example is a simple use-case, Salesforce has more than a dozen different types of standard fields that can be used to create new custom fields. These custom fields can then be used in a special way to fit exactly what a company needs.

CRM is Unique From Business to Business

Customer relationship management is at the core of every business. While some internal systems requirements are generic and cheap templates can be sufficient, CRM is not one of these. As we work with clients to empower them to grow their businesses, we regularly navigate this important distinction with our clients – when a generic solution is sufficient and when a tool needs to be flexible and customizable.

If you have any questions about managing your customers or how to help improve your CRM system, especially if you use Salesforce, feel free to contact us. We’d love to help your business continue to excel.

]]>2016-09-13T16:22:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/three-tips-on-workflows-and-automation-in-salesforce-for-lead-capture
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/three-tips-on-workflows-and-automation-in-salesforce-for-lead-capture#When:22:39:00ZSalesforce is a powerful CRM system that can dramatically increase the efficiency and effectiveness of your sales operations. Some of the most powerful features in Salesforce are the configurable automation tools. Today we’ll look at three different ways to utilize automation tools within a Salesforce account to improve organizational efficiency.

1. Lead Generation

At the core of all good CRM systems is the automation of creating new leads. In addition to adding leads directly into Salesforce, users can also gather leads through API’s and web-to-lead applications which connect external websites with their Salesforce system.

By using either of these tools, Salesforce users can connect their external website with their Salesforce system. For example, a company could choose to integrate their “Contact Us” form with their Salesforce account so that each submission would create a new lead. By giving thought to the type of information a company values most, companies can create fields on their web forms to collect the data they want on their lead records in Salesforce. This type of early-stage data collection on potential leads is critical to an effective sales funnel.

2. Lead Assignment

As leads begin pouring into a company’s Salesforce account, whether by API integration or the Salesforce Web-to-Lead application, one of the first conditional decisions a company should make is who to assign a new lead to within their organization. In Salesforce, companies can use the Lead Assignment feature to set up criteria for how leads get assigned to various staff . For example, in many organizations, leads are divided geographically with each Account Manager responsible for leads from a certain range of zip codes or states. When a company divides its sales territories geographically, it is critical that they also require some type of geographic information on their website forms. By requiring the same information on their web forms as is used to assign leads to different Account Managers, a company can add conditional criteria to their lead assignment logic in order to automatically assign leads to the appropriate Account Managers that match with the territory assignments.

This holistic approach to lead capture – considering everything from the external website contact forms to the territory assignments of the sales team – enables a company to fully leverage another layer of automation within Salesforce. With this cohesive process in place, companies can improve their Sales Team’s efficiency and effectiveness.

3. Workflows

The last crucial component to leverage, in order to maximize the automation of the lead capture process, is the use of the Workflow tools within Salesforce. Salesforce has three primary tools that can be used to create workflow applications:

Flows

Workflow Rules

Process Builder

Each of these applications can be used to create both simple and robust workflow solutions to optimize a company’s response to new leads. Depending on the goals and scope of the workflow a company wants, one application may be more effective than another, but the goal is to leverage these tools to automate as many routine actions as possible.

Common configurations of these workflow tools center around creating an automated process for task creation for sales staff members. Using these tools, conditions can be created within the logic to prioritize leads, send reminders for sales staff, and create tasks with lead-specific information. This final piece of creating workflows enables organizations to automate their operations and reduce the management overhead required to fill their sales funnel.

In Closing

Many companies use Salesforce, but aren’t tapping into its potential. When customized to fit your business, Salesforce can leverage real-time data for informed decision-making, improved sales processes and increased staff efficiency. Key reports can be set up to grant business owners and sales staff the ability to see everything that’s happening in the sales pipeline – empowering them to strategically manage people and measure results.

If you need help with your Salesforce configuration and customization, get in touch – it’s a core competency of ours at GRAYBOX and we’d love to help you out.

]]>2016-09-06T22:39:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/big-spender-salesforce-acquires-demandware
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/big-spender-salesforce-acquires-demandware#When:20:47:00ZWhat’s a good way to kick off the summer? How about going on a $2.8 billion shopping spree! Salesforce did just that in June by agreeing to terms to buy Demandware. Once you get over the twinge of jealousy for a company that can buy things that cost billions, you have to consider what this means for Salesforce moving forward. What does Demandware’s cloud-based ecommerce system provide Salesforce and how might this change the cloud-based software landscape?

By acquiring Demandware, Salesforce is following in the footsteps of Oracle and SAP who each made ecommerce platform acquisitions –SAP with Hybris in 2013 and Oracle with ATG in 2010. But why would three companies whose core businesses have little to do with selling physical products online add ecommerce platforms to their operations? What is Salesforce doing buying up an ecommerce platform when it is primarily known for its CRM system?

Consumer Behavior is Shifting

At their core, each of these acquisitions is driven by the changing landscape of consumer behavior. When comparing ecommerce sales growth to traditional retail sales growth, the numbers are staggering – ecommerce sales have grown by an average of 15% each year for the past three years, and traditional retail growth has slowed to growth rates of less than 4%. Making up only about 10% of all shopping sales, ecommerce sales are expected to continue their upward growth trajectory.

Salesforce's acquisition of Demandware is an intelligent response to the growing popularity of ecommerce in the retail sector – they will be poised to offer customers an integrated ecommerce and CRM platform.This combination not only diversifies Salesforce’s product offering for new customers, but it also provides additional service offerings to market to existing customers. Now the thousands of customers already using Salesforce for their daily customer relationship management have a viable, web-based, ecommerce system they can use to build or replace their website. As Salesforce integrates the Demandware platform with the Salesforce ecosystem it will become an ever-more compelling and competitive service offering than Salesforce was previously.

Bolstering Themselves Against the Competition

This acquisition also acts as a moat to hold off other competitors that have been challenging both companies in the increasingly competitive CRM and ecommerce platform spaces. You might recall the recent purchase of NetSuite by Oracle, which we feel was also a similarly-inspired strategic manoever (Oracle Buys NetSuite - But Why?). Now, all else being equal, if a company is deciding between ecommerce platforms and already uses Salesforce for their CRM, Demandware (soon to be renamed Salesforce Commerce Cloud) has an immediate leg up on competitors. Similarly, Demandware now benefits from a closer connection with one of the most widely used CRM systems available in Salesforce. This is especially valuable to Salesforce since Demandware has been particularly popular with traditional retail businesses which are a highly valuable customer for Salesforce.

The bottom-line is that, while Salesforce had to spend nearly $3 billion to make it happen, the sales growth in ecommerce and the value proposition of fully integrating an ecommerce system with a world-renowned CRM system, sets Salesforce up to be in the thick of the internet revolution for years to come.

]]>2016-08-30T20:47:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/graybox-live-stream-of-downtown-portland
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/graybox-live-stream-of-downtown-portland#When:17:44:00ZWe love calling Portland home. GRAYBOX is proud that we built a company here successfully, and we are enamored with the beautiful view we have of downtown from our new 7th floor office in the 110-year old Olympic Mills building. In fact, we felt like we should share our view with everyone! So we installed a rooftop camera that serves up a live feed of our view.

Put Our Office’s View on Your Website

Want to add the live stream to your website? Here’s a code snippet to do just that. Edit the width and height to match your website layout needs.

Upping the Ante

Upon gaining access to the rooftop, we found out that KGW also has a “live” cam feed up there. However, theirs runs on legacy camera and server technology that might be about 20 years old and the feed snaps a static picture every minute or so instead of streaming live video.As a crew of tech folks who thrive on the idea of improving systems, we decided to up the ante with our own system. GRAYBOX purchased a Nest cam. The Google-owned company sells Nest cams for about $150-200, which serve up 100% live stream video at 1080p. Instead of the special walk-in closet that houses the KGW system, ours is about the size of a softball and is protected by a waterproof outdoor case. Our system is wide-angle and live streaming 24-7.

Tips For Your Future Nest Livestream Feed System

In the interest of being helpful, we wanted to share some lessons learned from this exercise so if you’re thinking of setting up a live stream with a Nest cam you can benefit from them:

The camera needs to be really close to a wifi hotspot. So close that we ended up setting up a hotspot just for the camera on the roof. The camera is the only thing using that wifi.

Every time you disconnect the wifi and connect it again, you have to physically disconnect the camera and plug it into a computer to reconnect it to the wifi. This can be a challenge if your camera is mounted on a rooftop.

We’re using an indoor camera with an outdoor case. This left some cables exposed which we had to take measures to protect from the elements. A fully outdoor camera may have been better.

Screwing into concrete is hardcore - we broke three drill bits trying to install the system!

Are you going to embed the feed into your site? We want to see what folks are doing with the feed! Please take a moment to drop us a line so we can check it out.

]]>2016-08-22T17:44:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/graybox-ranks-no.-370-in-inc.-magazines-2016-inc.-500
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/graybox-ranks-no.-370-in-inc.-magazines-2016-inc.-500#When:22:27:00ZGRAYBOX was ranked NO. 370 on Inc. magazine’s 35th annual Inc. 500, an exclusive ranking of the nation's fastest-growing private companies. This new feather in our cap comes closely behind the Portland Business Journal ranking us as the 9th Fastest Growing Private Company in the Portland-metro area. We’ve seen 12 employees join the firm in 2016 so far, and are planning to add about nine more staff members before 2017. As the GRAYBOX team grows, we’re able to partner with more and more businesses to help them find success in a digital-first world.

The Inc. 500 and Inc. 5000 list offers a snapshot of who’s who amongst America’s independent entrepreneurs. Companies such as Microsoft, Yelp, Pandora, Timberland, Dell, Domino’s Pizza, LinkedIn, Zillow, and many other well-known names gained early exposure as members of the Inc. 5000. The average company on the list achieved a mind-boggling three-year growth of 490%. The companies on the Inc. 5000 list have an aggregate revenue is $205 billion, generating 647,000 jobs over the past three years. GRAYBOX has added 51 local jobs since we founded. The Inc. 5000 is ranked according to percentage revenue growth over a four-year period, and the Inc. 500 are the top 10% on the 5000 list. GRAYBOX was the 22nd Fastest-Growing digital agency nationwide, and 2nd Fastest-Growing agency among Oregon Companies.

While awards are great, they’re not what motivates the GRAYBOX team’s performance. We believe in partnerships not projects – our involvement with clients reaches deeper than the project at hand. GRAYBOX’s solutions have far-reaching impacts into our clients’ businesses including their online marketing presence, business operations, sales workflows, logistics, content development and mobile apps. Custom-built digital solutions can automate processes for clients to relieve admin staff, and empower management with the data and marketing tools needed to attain growth goals. We’re motivated to have real impacts on our clients’ businesses by leveraging our online and offline expertise to help them succeed.

GRAYBOX is proud to work with some of the most talented folks in the industry. We’d like to thank our wonderful clients, without whom none of our success would be possible. We’d also like to thank our employees for their hard work and dedication. We love what we do and our team is inspired by the impacts we’re having on our clients’ businesses. Being recognized for our success is an honor. As we continue to grow our eyes are on the horizon, ready to tackle new challenges with our client partners.

Inc. 500|5000 Methodology

The 2016 Inc. 500 is ranked according to percentage revenue growth when comparing 2012 to 2015. To qualify, companies must have been founded and generating revenue by March 31, 2012. They had to be U.S.-based, privately held, for profit, and independent – not subsidiaries or divisions of other companies – as of December 31, 2015. The minimum revenue required for 2012 is $100,000; the minimum for 2015 is $2 million. The Inc. 500 represent the top 10% of the Inc. 5000 list.

]]>2016-08-17T22:27:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/oracle-buys-netsuite-but-why
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/oracle-buys-netsuite-but-why#When:17:55:00ZOn the morning of Thursday July 28, I received a text message from a former co-worker that currently works for a NetSuite VAR in the Seattle area. The text was just a URL to a NetSuite web page for a press release, without preamble or reaction. Once I clicked the link, I understood why she knew it wouldn’t require explanation: NetSuite had been acquired by Oracle.

I’m a strategy nerd, and I love the idea of a business making moves to better their position in the market. Every business believes (and some actually understand) they fit in a particular segment of their ecosystem, and the publicly visible strategic moves they make offer a rare glimpse into the otherwise protected thinking of their management team. Having supported, implemented, designed, and sold many complex NetSuite solutions over the past decade, it was a storyline that really piqued my interest, driven by one, really compelling question:

Why would Oracle acquire NetSuite?

As I’m wont to do, I immediately turned to my friend the internet. After 30 minutes of searching, reading, and following various related links, I was able to distill down the common speculative themes into these three categories:

Oracle is buying SaaS market share rather than building it on their own (Bloomberg)

Oracle and NetSuite are complimentary products that will “co-exist forever” (Forbes, and a quote from the joint press release)

This acquisition will allow Oracle to compete more effectively against competitors like Salesforce.com (Fortune)

As I read through these articles, I couldn’t help but think that they were each missing the point and just rehashing the same tired analysis. This lead to more searches, more reading, and many, many numbers. In the end, none of the proffered justifications seem very well supported, or they ignore important details as follows:

1. Oracle did not purchase NetSuite to acquire market share: Oracle can be grossly simplified and distilled down into three primary business lines: Hardware, Software License, and Cloud. Hardware and Software License have traditionally been the vast majority of Oracle revenues (~92%), and both have been trending downward, with losses of 2% and 7%, respectively, in the last quarter. Oracle SaaS (Cloud) products, on the other hand, grew by 68%, to represent approximately $690 million in revenue in the same period. While representing only 8% of overall revenue for the company, it clearly shows an acceleration in their push into the cloud with a simultaneous decrease in traditional on-premise revenue.

It’s important to note: that number is QUARTERLY revenue. Oracle’s fiscal calendar doesn’t align with NetSuite’s, so there isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison. But for the last year (which overlaps 50% with Oracle’s year), Oracle’s SaaS business had approximately $2.2 billion in revenue, compared with NetSuite’s $741 million. With projected growth rates of Oracle’s cloud software solutions at 75% for the coming year, compared to NetSuite’s projected growth around 35%, the argument of a need to acquire market share through purchase or corporate acquisition seems dubious.

With an acquisition price of $9.3 billion, Oracle would need to be betting that NetSuite will continue to significantly increase in value, outpacing their historical growth rates. In addition, Oracle would have to rely on continued NetSuite market share growth coming out of their competitors' share. Oracle otherwise runs the risk of NetSuite's growth being fueled by cannibalizing the existing Oracle customer base, and potentially decreasing the currently high growth rate of Oracle's own cloud business line. Unfortunately, much of NetSuite’s growth in the last five years has occurred as a result of moving up-market into traditionally Oracle territory, which makes this scenario very unlikely.

Given the financial facts of the companies’ respective annual revenues and growth rates for SaaS products, and because they play increasingly in the same market, it is unlikely Oracle purchased NetSuite for the sake of acquiring market share.

2. Oracle and NetSuite are not merely complementary products that will “co-exist forever.” An increasing portion of NetSuite’s growth has come at the expense of the gray area between the small and mid-sized business (SMB) market (traditionally NetSuite’s bread and butter) and the Enterprise market (traditionally the purview of Oracle and SAP). As early as three years ago, the frequency with which I competed against Oracle when selling NetSuite started to dramatically increase. NetSuite has made consistent inroads to the Enterprise market in the past five years, including offering dedicated environments, opening the platform to deeper development, granting better database access, and appealing to larger organizations. Each of these moves is targeted at addressing the traditional arguments of on-premise Oracle enterprise clients against the cloud: “I don’t want to be on a shared box”“I don’t have access to customizations”“I can’t get access to my data”“The system isn’t sufficiently scalable to meet the needs of my business.” While NetSuite continues to eliminate the arguments of, “Why NOT NetSuite?”, they have slowly eroded the moat that traditionally protected Oracle from competition.

The baseline license fees have begun to price out the “S” clients from the SMB market as NetSuite has continued to move up-market. Part of this pricing strategy (with the corresponding feature enhancements) was aimed at appealing to more enterprise clients, and diligently moving the product upstream.

These improvements have enabled NetSuite to compete directly against Oracle in some scenarios, particularly for those companies on the lower end of the Oracle ecosystem considering the choice of upgrading an existing Oracle implementation or moving to a replacement platform, such as NetSuite, for a fraction of the cost. Ten years ago, very few organizations would have seen this as a viable option. Today, many organizations have to take a hard look, in large part because of the increasing feature parity as each release improves the NetSuite product. A continued dedication to strong investment by Oracle in the NetSuite product would only further erode the protective boundary between the markets, increasing the likelihood that NetSuite would cannibalize Oracle sales by improving feature parity between the two offerings.

As a result, it is highly unlikely that Oracle would continue to invest heavily in both its own offerings as well as those of NetSuite, especially in light of the investment cost of the acquisition and the respective growth rates of the two companies’ SaaS offerings. While investment in NetSuite may continue, it is unlikely to be targeted at areas of the product that could lead to the loss of Oracle customers.

3. The acquisition of NetSuite does not seem to give Oracle a particular competitive advantage against other SaaS companies. Salesforce.com was listed in multiple analyst reviews as a primary motivator of NetSuite acquisition, largely on account of Salesforce being the de facto leader in SaaS CRM software (by comparison to the $9.3 billion NetSuite price tag, Salesforce has a value somewhere north of $50 billion). However, there are few truly competitive advantages Oracle gains through NetSuite to help it better compete against Salesforce. NetSuite includes really strong CRM capabilities, but it is not necessarily a primary competitor to Salesforce. Zach Nelson (NetSuite CEO) has frequently commented that organizations may run both NetSuite and Salesforce concurrently, as the product depth for NetSuite resides in the accounting and ERP features, with CRM to augment, and the strength of Salesforce is purely in CRM, with no accounting or ERP features.

Moreover, it was Oracle’s inclusion of CRM features in their own products that led to one of the initial rifts between Larry Ellison and Marc Benioff, in part because the CRM capabilities of Oracle’s own products began to keep pace with those of Salesforce.com.

There are no particularly unique characteristics of NetSuite’s CRM that Oracle gains through the acquisition to help it compete against Salesforce. Aside from also serving the SMB market, Salesforce and NetSuite are much closer to complimentary products than, say, NetSuite and Oracle. If an organization were evaluating both enterprise and SMB software, and looking for a combination system to tackle both ERP and CRM functionality, the competition would not be between Oracle to Salesforce, it would be between Oracle and NetSuite.

Oracle’s Acquisition of NetSuite Was Defensive

At the end of the day, I think the real motivation behind the Oracle acquisition of NetSuite is the need for, and capability to execute, a defensive maneuver to protect market share.

As mentioned above, much of NetSuite’s growth in the past five years has been through an acceleration into the enterprise market, while moving away from the lower end of the SMB market. NetSuite has really successfully transformed themselves from an online Quickbooks alternative (remember when they were NetLedger?), into a legitimate option for large businesses evaluating traditionally enterprise software packages. The company has continually grown, showing annual growth in excess of 30% for a number of years, and continuing to demonstrate a capability to effectively serve an increasingly complex segment of the market for ERP and CRM needs via the cloud. They have moved beyond the bleeding edge of technology by proving the model, which makes their platform a compelling option for ever larger businesses who may have been unwilling to take a risk on the cloud five years ago.

At the same time, Oracle is seeing a decline in their traditional business lines due to the competition presented by their cloud services, including NetSuite. The only area of significant growth for Oracle is in their own cloud offerings. In previous years, Oracle could scare enterprise customers away from the cloud through doom and gloom predictions of data loss, inflexibility, and performance issues. As NetSuite has continued to prove their model, this tactic has become more challenging for Oracle. More importantly, with Oracle’s primary growth coming from their cloud services, they can no longer afford to claim the cloud is an unsuitable alternative to their traditional offerings. When Oracle promotes their own high-growth cloud business, they simultaneously give credence to all other cloud competitors over the traditional model. When you consider that NetSuite projects are only a fraction of the cost of Oracle projects in terms of implementation and licensing, the competitive threat of NetSuite against Oracle’s own cloud offerings starts to become very real.

Given Larry Ellison’s large stake in NetSuite (approximately 40% at the time the deal was announced), a defensive acquisition by Oracle seems like the much more likely motivation for the purchase. Ellison maintained his fiduciary obligations by having an impartial committee handle the negotiations, but carried sufficient weight and influence to instigate and drive the transaction. By acquiring NetSuite, Oracle ensures they can maintain a protective moat around their fastest growing business line, while also mitigating the risk of market share losses in their traditional business lines to a growing competitor.

]]>2016-08-15T17:55:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/amazon-accelerator-series-part-5-brand-development
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/amazon-accelerator-series-part-5-brand-development#When:16:08:00ZWelcome to our 5th and final entry in our Accelerator Series, where we’ve been discussing the opportunity to sell products on Amazon. To finish our series, we’ll look at the value of long-term Brand Development efforts and how companies are able to build upon their success selling on Amazon. If this is the first you’ve seen our series, be sure to check out how Amazon might be a fit for your business and our other posts:

Thousands of companies have found that by selling on Amazon.com they are able to grow their business. Once a company has realized success with a few products on Amazon, there are a number of steps to take to further capitalize on the Amazon Marketplace. There are three business development areas to focus on for continued success with Amazon: Sustain Growth, Develop Products, and Expand Markets.

Sustain Growth

It takes a concerted effort to be successful on Amazon. Once a company has found a profitable niche to sell their items, they should do everything possible to sustain momentum and build upon that early success. Companies should focus their initial efforts on aggressively expanding their pay-per-click (PPC) advertising in order to find additional profitable search terms. By experimenting with various terms and testing effectiveness, the best keywords can be identified. This iterative process means that a company’s products will show up more often and will lead to increased sales. The broader the base of profitable search terms, the better a company’s products will perform.

These same search terms also help create a barrier-to-entry to fend off competitors with similar products. By using pay-per-click promotions, a company can impede their competitors’ ability to have similar visibility for the same search terms. This is due to the fact that Amazon only allows a certain number of ads per search. This way a company can prioritize highly valuable search terms and promote their products’ success.

Once a company builds out a majority of their search terms, they can also begin conducting A/B tests on their product page to experiment with the performance of different content. To do this, a company would define a testing period, often a full calendar week, and change one content piece for that testing period. Then, after tallying the sales results, page visits, and conversion rate, the company would use the better performing content piece and test against another variation of the content for a second week. And so on and so forth, continuing to experiment and revise to develop more effective content for the desired results.

One of the first A/B tests we recommend is on the main product image. This image appears on search results pages and has a dramatic impact on whether customers click on a company’s product. By changing the image to a variation, companies can gain confidence that they are using the best image variation possible. Another recommended A/B test is the product title.

Both of these tests should be influenced by customer questions and reviews, especially negative reviews, since customers who have had a negative experience with a product may expose a weakness in the content or description of the product. All of these techniques are meant to develop over time and should prompt companies to stay attentive to their successful products as first priority before moving on to new products or sales channels.

Develop Products

Companies should also begin considering how they can expand their product line to reach more customers. It is in most companies’ best interest to have as many products available to customers as possible as long as they are selling well. That being said, once a company finds that a certain product or group of products sells well, they should look to find complementary products to broaden their sales platform. Take for example a company selling kitchen utensils. If they are successful selling a stainless steel mixing spoon, then they might consider selling a stainless steel spatula or whisk. Not only does Amazon automatically do some cross promotion as an upsell tactic in their “Frequently Bought Together” section, but the second product also broadens the customer base a company can sell to. Now this company isn’t just limited to the people who need a new stainless steel mixing spoon, but now spatulas and one day a whisk, knife set, and mixing bowls.

The key to this new Product Development phase, is for companies to stay focused on the points of differentiation that led to their early success. Using the previous example, if the company is a stainless steel manufacturer, and produces excellent kitchenware, the alternate product from the first stainless steel mixing spoon is not a plastic spatula or silicon ice cube tray. Companies should start to diversify with what they know and only once they exhaust those opportunities should they venture into brand new product lines. The selling features of the products that brought a company success should be foundational to the larger product development effort.

Expand Markets

After a company has built out their paid advertising, run extensive A/B testing on their product listings, and begun developing new products for the Amazon marketplace, they should start to consider alternate sales methods for their products. One of the hidden gems of working with Amazon.com and their fulfillment network, is a resource called Multi-Channel Fulfillment. This service allows companies to sell inventory that is stored in the Amazon Fulfillment Network through other channels and still utilize the Amazon warehouses as a third party logistics provider. This means that if a company branches out and begins selling their products on ebay.com, jet.com, newegg.com, or even their own website, they can ship the product directly to the customer using the same fulfillment network they already use for their Amazon sales.

This fulfillment method not only reduces logistics overhead of managing two fulfillment systems, but Amazon also doesn’t charge their commission for sales through other channels and only charges for the fulfillment. That means that while Amazon.com may be a company’s largest marketplace by volume, selling through their own website or another marketplace can be their most profitable option, all without building a redundant fulfillment network. As we have discussed throughout this series, working with Amazon is about efficiently scaling to maximize growth.

At GRAYBOX we believe in a balanced and deliberate approach to helping businesses grow. We know that Amazon.com presents as many challenges as it does opportunities, but it is our goal to provide guidance and help answer questions so companies feel confident in their future success. If you have additional questions about Amazon or other online marketplaces please don’t hesitate to contact us.

]]>2016-08-10T16:08:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/amazon-accelerator-series-part-4-marketing-tactics-and-strategy
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/amazon-accelerator-series-part-4-marketing-tactics-and-strategy#When:20:57:00ZWelcome to our 4th installment in our Accelerator Series. If this is your first visit, check out the other articles in our Amazon Accelerator series, where we explore the opportunity of selling on Amazon.com:

Today we are going to discuss the strategy behind marketing and selling products on Amazon.com. We’ve already reviewed how big the opportunity is, but with that large of an opportunity comes intense competition. It is critical that companies know how they are going to compete in the marketplace in order to improve their chances of success.

Amazon’s Product Search Algorithm

First we need to cover how products are found on Amazon.com. Amazon’s catalog has over 480 million products, leaving lots of room for products to get lost in obscurity. Products are primarily found using search, found at the top of each Amazon page. When a search is entered by a customer, Amazon’s search-results algorithm returns links to individual product pages based on a combination of different factors, one of which is the conversion rate for an item. This algorithm acts to facilitate a win-win-win situation, where companies benefit from selling their product, customers benefit from quickly finding what they are looking for, and Amazon benefits by receiving commission on the sale and any fulfillment fees involved with handling the logistics. In the same way, an item that doesn’t convert well for a search term will, overtime, lose position due to its poor conversion rate. The bottom-line is that the conversation rate for a product page is critical and the content a company has on their product page is at the core of an optimized conversion strategy (for more on this check out Part 2 of our series).

But what if a company is attempting to join an already competitive category where incumbents have years of sales history? How can a new company be successful when historical conversation rate plays such a significant role in Amazon’s search algorithm? This is where marketing strategy meets content strategy, to create a holistic sales strategy.

Optimize Your Product Page Content

When a company starts selling an item, they are in control of the content on their product page and can craft it with keyword-rich, descriptive, onbrand copywriting. This attention to the product page content is critical because it helps increase the conversion rate for the product. Unfortunately, if no one ever clicks on the link to the product page because the link is buried on page 20 of the search results, few units will ever be sold – a perfect 100% conversion rate on zero page visits is still zero sales. This is where Amazon’s pay-per-click advertising becomes critical.

Amazon Sponsored Products

When using Amazon’s pay-per-click tools, called Amazon Sponsored Products, companies can spend money on advertising in order to showcase their product listing when certain keywords are searched by potential customers. For those who are familiar with pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, this is very similar to how Google uses sponsored ads to promote different websites.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with PPC, the system works like an auction. Amazon offers companies the ability to compete to bid for positioning on search terms. Companies commit, in advance, to pay a certain amount if their advertisement is clicked by a customer when the customer searches for a specific search term. Amazon then displays as many as seven of the top bids and the associated products which companies paid to promote.

Amazon loves this competition for their advertising space. By strategically positioning the advertisements at the top of the search results page, Amazon gives any company the ability to position their product near the top of the search results if they are willing to pay for it. By using sponsored ads, a company can display their product alongside, or even above, the historically best performing product for a given search term. It is for this reason that the combination of a well-crafted advertising and content strategy is critical to the success of any new product.

PPC on Amazon Pays Off

A well-executed paid advertising strategy ensures adequate customer traffic to the product page and high quality content helps produce sales. This click traffic and these completed sales are recognized by Amazon’s search algorithm which then ranks the product page higher for a given search. As this ranking ascent occurs, not only do companies make sales through the advertising, albeit at a lower margin due to the advertising expense, but they improve their product’s position for the search term. The ultimate payoff for a company spending money on advertising, is that as their product moves closer to the first position in Amazon’s search, customers find their product and purchase the item without using the paid advertisement. When customers find products organically, companies end up capturing sales, maximizing their margin, and acquiring sales they otherwise would not have had.

There are other marketing tactics that companies can use to drive sales. These tactics, such as promotional giveaways and Amazon’s Lightning Deals, do produce results, but are less essential for the long-term success of an item. Ultimately, when a company has a focused sponsored ads strategy, combined with exceptional product page content, they are well positioned to be successful.

At GRAYBOX all our work is inspired by helping our clients succeed in their businesses. We're excited to be covering how to sell smart on Amazon.com so we can help all our readers, not just our clients. We like to take a results-driven approach and partner with our clients to tackle business problems together. If you'd like to discuss your challenges selling on Amazon to see if we can help, please reach out. If there is a topic you think would be helpful for us to cover let us know that too - we'd love to hear from you!

]]>2016-08-09T20:57:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/amazon-accelerator-series-part-3-supply-chain-management
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/amazon-accelerator-series-part-3-supply-chain-management#When:21:56:00ZIf you’re just joining us, this is Part 3 of our Amazon Accelerator Series, where we’re exploring the opportunity for businesses to grow by using Amazon.com to increase sales. Be sure to check out Part 1: How to Sell on Amazon and Part 2: The Product Page.

As we’ve seen, the sales opportunities on Amazon.com are substantial, but an equally powerful aspect of Amazon is the Operational Efficiency companies can attain when they use the marketplace. Today we’ll focus on two business units for which Amazon’s systems and operations framework can help ease the complications that come with rapid growth.

1. Supply Chain and Inventory Management

Selling on Amazon can make a major difference for businesses. In some cases, Amazon can impact volume of product sales by 10x or even 100x. In order to take advantage of all these extra sales opportunities, companies need to effectively manage their supply chain and purchasing department to maintain inventory levels. While a 10x to 100x growth in sales can seem a little like drinking from a firehose, Amazon supports companies by giving them access to a suite of analytics tools to monitor product sales and anticipate misaligned purchasing and inventory management. Amazon’s network of warehouses also makes it possible to ship inventory directly from suppliers and manufacturers to the fulfillment warehouses. By eliminating the need to bring every unit through their own facilities, companies can scale their operations without exceeding their physical capacity. This reduced stress on receiving processes not only lowers lead times and freight costs, but also keeps operating expenses in check. These improvements in efficiency free companies up to work on the most important issues affecting their business.

2. Product Fulfillment

Poorly managed fulfillment operations can cripple an ecommerce business. Many businesses have suffered through the headache of overwhelming their warehouse with a spike in sales, they’ve struggled to find warehouse staff during a seasonal sales rush, or maybe they’ve had their order management system crash midday causing delays on order fulfillment. Growing fast is exciting, but many companies can grow so fast that they end up damaging their brand as their operations and systems fall behind. Working with Amazon gives businesses access to more options to manage growth. Once a company ships their product into Amazon’s warehouses, and elects to use Amazon’s Fulfillment Service, all the fulfillment logistics to ship products directly to customers are handled by Amazon. That means that while there is some incremental increase in the logistics overhead, a company can grow more efficiently compared with handling all the processes internally.

Closing Thoughts

Using Amazon’s Fulfillment Network, companies also often see improved customer experience because their customers can receive orders with same-day, next-day, or second-day delivery service options available through Amazon Prime. Amazon even allows companies to ship using their negotiated shipping rates with FedEx, UPS, and USPS, helping to save on fulfillment costs.

Optimizing Amazon ecommerce efforts to be as effective as possible is a passion of ours. If you'd like to dig a little deeper after reading our Amazon Accelerator series, please get in touch! We want to hear about your challenges and goals for selling on Amazon.com and see how we can help.

]]>2016-08-03T21:56:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/amazon-accelerator-series-part-2-the-product-page
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/amazon-accelerator-series-part-2-the-product-page#When:21:56:00Z(If you missed them, check out our Amazon Opportunity post and the first part of our Accelerator Series Part 1: How to Sell on Amazon.com).

Once a company decides how they’re going to sell products on Amazon.com, it’s time to actually start selling.

Before we begin, we need to cover a few fundamentals:

The Amazon Marketplace is built around individual product sales performance. This means every product page a company creates has to be of the highest quality – there is almost no brand equity on Amazon, especially if a product page converts poorly overtime due to unoptimized content. Amazon makes money when items sell, so if a company’s products aren’t selling their product position will suffer.

It’s also important to note that Amazon’s catalog is organized by assigning a unique number, called an ASIN number, to each product page. Products are organized into categories and are ranked overtime by their conversion rate for various search terms compared to other items. The higher the conversion rate, the better a product page will be positioned for those specific search terms, improving item visibility and increasing sales.

Amazon Product Sections

Each product page has nine key content sections:

Product Title

Brand

Resale Price

Bullet Points

Images

Product Description

Product Information

Customer Questions & Answers

Customer Reviews.

We’ll focus our discussion on the Merchant Fulfillment and FBA sales methods because they give companies the most control over their product page. For these two sales methods, companies are able to submit content for all but the Customer Questions and Customer Reviews content sections. There are limitations and guidelines provided by Amazon for each content section, but the quality of the content largely falls on the company selling the product. Because Amazon takes a “boundaries” approach to their guidelines, where they set minimum requirements and maximum limitations, there is ample room to display quality content. In fact, the latitude companies have to create content is substantial enough to lead to very different customer experiences and can have a dramatic impact on sales.

Tips For Setting Up Your Product Page

Because each category can have unique requirements and limitations, I’ll cover a few, key, universal principles that should always be considered when beginning to sell a product on Amazon:

Product images are crucial. Companies should use all available image slots and should carefully consider Amazon’s product image requirements.

The first image is the most important image because it will appear on search results pages.

Product titles should be clear and concise but not leave out any detail about product variation. For example, companies should use size, color, and quantity attributes in the product title:

All available bullet points should be used in order to provide customers with as much information about the product as possible. The same methodology and level of detail should be used for the Product Description – be clear and aim to answer any lingering questions a customer might have before they purchase.

Product reviews are very important for the success of a product, if customers leave negative reviews and they seem to coalesce around a certain issue, consider the implications and seek to address the concern with product improvements or by setting better customer expectations with the content on your product page.

Summary

Product page quality is one of the most important factors in being successful on Amazon and cannot be overstated. From the moment a Product Page is created and an ASIN is assigned to the Product Page by Amazon, Amazon is tracking page performance. Whether companies like it or not, their product pages are either growing their search position or making them fall further behind their competition.

Are you thinking of selling or already selling on Amazon? Optimizing Amazon ecommerce efforts is a specialty of ours. Feel free to get in touch with any questions or concerns about Amazon Marketplace. It's a powerful tool when used strategically and we'd be happy to advise you on how to use it to your business' advantage.

]]>2016-08-02T21:56:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/how-to-sell-on-amazon.com
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/how-to-sell-on-amazon.com#When:21:55:00ZThis is our first post in our Accelerator Series, where we shed light on ways to grow your business by using Amazon.com. For an overview on the power of the Amazon Marketplace, check out our post, The Amazon Marketplace Opportunity.

There are three main ways for companies to sell items on Amazon.com. Each method comes with its opportunities and its costs, with its risks and its rewards, but make no mistake there are companies making tens of millions of dollars annually by using each of these methods. This is about helping your business decide which method works best for you.

1. Merchant Fulfillment

This sales method offers companies the opportunity to sell products on Amazon.com but does not utilize the Amazon Fulfillment Network. Companies using Merchant Fulfillment are responsible for shipping their products directly to customers after a customer purchases an item through Amazon.com. These companies are also responsible for processing returns should a customer decide to return an item.

Selling using Merchant Fulfillment can be advantageous if a company has access to a wide range of products and distribution centers, especially if the company can leverage a just-in-time inventory strategy and drop-ship products from their vendors. This can reduce the carrying cost of inventory and improve cash flow for companies that can manage the logistics effectively.

There are, however, several downsides to this sales method. Amazon likes to control things, and as such does not prefer companies use the Merchant Fulfillment sales method since the inventory is outside their control and product tracking. As a result, Amazon has said that their search algorithms prioritize products fulfilled by their own fulfillment network since they can stand behind their delivery guarantees.

Another disadvantage to this sales method is that the free two-day shipping offered through Amazon Prime is rarely available to customers when items are being sold using Merchant Fulfillment. This downside is magnified because many Prime members have elected to filter out all items that aren’t available on Prime during their searches, something that is problematic for product visibility.

With Merchant Fulfillment the inventory carrying-cost, the warehousing and the shipping costs are all the responsibility of the company selling the products. Companies are also in control of the resale price on Amazon.com, which allows them to maximize their revenue for each sale. For payment on sales made, companies receive weekly remittance settlements from Amazon as a sum of their sales revenue for the items sold minus Amazon’s 15% sales commission, any advertising costs, and other miscellaneous fees.

2. Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA)

This sales method offers companies the ability to sell products on Amazon and utilizes Amazon’s Fulfillment Network to handle warehousing and product fulfillment to customers. Companies using Fulfillment By Amazon are responsible for shipping their products in bulk quantities to the Amazon warehouse designated by Amazon through their web service called Seller Central. These shipments distribute a company’s items throughout Amazon’s Fulfillment Network for future sale to customers. Once an item is purchased by a customer, Amazon handles all the warehousing and shipping to the customer. Items that are returned after purchase by customers are also returned directly to Amazon for collection.

There are many benefits to using Amazon’s Fulfillment Network. Because Amazon knows the availability and location of items throughout their fulfillment network, they allow companies to offer free two-day Prime shipping for Amazon Prime Members when purchasing an item. Items within the Amazon Fulfillment Network also receive better positioning in the search algorithm, helping improve product visibility.

Companies using FBA are charged a monthly storage fee based on cubic volume in storage and are assessed pick, pack, and ship fees for item fulfillment from the Amazon warehouses. All the inventory sold using FBA is owned by the company selling the products so the company bears the cost of the inventory and the forecasting responsibilities for maintaining adequate stock for demand.

While maintaining ownership of the inventory adds a carrying-cost for companies, these companies are able to control the sale price of the items in order to maximize their sales revenue. Companies receive weekly remittance settlements from Amazon as a sum of their sales for the items sold minus Amazon’s 15% sales commission, any fulfillment fees, advertising expenses, and other miscellaneous fees.

3. Vendor Express/Vendor Central

These two sales methods function in a very similar way. In both of these instances Amazon no longer acts as a marketplace but becomes a distributor for a company’s products. Rather than owning the inventory as with the FBA and Merchant Fulfillment programs, in these two sales methods, Amazon submits purchase orders directly to companies and buys inventory for resale. These methods require that companies are willing to sell their product to Amazon at some discounted, wholesale-like, price.

The difference between these two methods is the access for companies. Vendor Express is a program that companies can apply for directly and are often accepted if their products meet certain Amazon contractual requirements. Vendor Central is more exclusive and is an invite-only program. Amazon uses Vendor Central to handpick brands and companies they want to distribute for.

If a company uses either of these methods, Amazon takes responsibility for a majority of the sales process once a purchase order is fulfilled by the company. Companies are not charged storage fees or fulfillment fees since the items have been purchased by Amazon.

These methods reduce some risks to companies because they no longer carry the inventory cost once Amazon purchases the items. Amazon also allows for their Vendor Central and Vendor Express partners to access special marketing opportunities under certain conditions. Some of these marketing opportunities include the Amazon Vine Promotion Program and A+ Product Page Content.

For payment, Amazon will often write into their contract a payment on terms requirement. In many cases this means that a seller will receive purchase orders from Amazon that will be paid using Net 60 terms. Amazon also frequently includes, what are called Co-op fees, in their Vendor Central and Vendor Express contracts.

There are three main types of Co-Op fees:

Market Development Fees

Freight Allowance Fees

Damage Allowance Fees

Thus Vendor Central and Vendor Express merchants receive payments based on the terms of the purchase orders they receive minus any Co-Op fees, and the top-line revenue takes a wholesale price strategy rather than the higher retail pricing available to companies selling directly to customers using Merchant Fulfillment or FBA.

In Closing

There is much more detail and nuance to each of these sales methods, but the bottom line is that the Amazon Marketplace, with over 50 million Prime Members in the US alone, is a marketplace that can make a significant impact on your business if managed correctly.

At GRAYBOX we specialize in helping businesses succeed by leveraging digital tools like Amazon's Marketplace. If you think that your company could benefit from some strategic help on how to best leverage Amazon ecommerce, get in touch! We want to hear about your challenges and see how we can help.

Do you have an ecommerce store? If you do, you know all about the juggernaut that is Amazon.com. The Seattle-based company has accelerated the growth of online shopping by convincing millions of shoppers to forgo the lines and crowds and buy from the comfort of their home. Amazon’s marketplace is the 800-pound gorilla of ecommerce.

What does that mean for your business? How can your site compete with a marketplace that accounted for over a quarter of all online sales and for more than half of all online sales growth in 2015?

The Marketplace

To start, we have to identify what it is that Amazon is doing so successfully, and how your business can benefit.

An important difference between your website and Amazon’s is that Amazon.com is a marketplace. Amazon allows millions of companies to sell products right alongside one another. Amazon isn’t the only marketplace doing this, it’s at the core of all online marketplaces. Hop on eBay.com, Newegg.com, Jet.com, or dozens of others, and you’ll see various strategies to bring sellers and customers together to make a sale. The key distinction for Amazon, however, is their powerful Network Effect.

Network Effect – for the Customer and Seller

Let’s unpack that Network Effect first from the customer’s perspective. For $99 per year an Amazon Prime customer gets access to free two-day shipping, video content, the convenience of skipping the store, no hassle returns, free music, free apps, and much more. The convenience and speed of shipping alone make the offer compelling to customers. Now instead of running around to 3 or 4 stores, customers can get everything they need all from one place. Each of these features creates a greater experience for the customer, and in Amazon’s mind, making the customer happy is key.

Now for the company selling the products. When selling on Amazon, each company has access to millions of potential customers, something many of them would otherwise never have access to. In addition, depending on the sales method used, a company can leverage Amazon’s world-class fulfillment network to ship items all around the world. Combine that reduction in warehousing and logistics overhead with an improved customer experience with the help of Amazon’s customer service, and companies are freed up to focus their attention on the most critical parts of their business.

Both of these groups act as two sides of the same coin, helping to ingrain online shopping, especially Amazon’s marketplace, into our everyday lives.

What Does It Mean For You?

Now for your business. Because Amazon is a marketplace, you have the opportunity to sell your products to millions of customers. Amazon’s marketplace is an opportunity for you to diversify your customer base and accelerate your growth. This is becoming especially important as shoppers change their search habits from the traditional Google search and jump right on Amazon when searching for products – in fact, over 44% of shoppers in 2015 began their searches for products directly on Amazon, while only 34% used search engines and the remaining 22% went directly to company websites.

Interested in learning more about how to start selling on Amazon.com? Check out the next article in our Amazon Accelerator Series: How to Sell on Amazon.com to learn more about how to make this marketplace work for you. Selling strategically on Amazon is one of our core competencies at GRAYBOX, so if you have immediate needs that are more complex than we've been able to cover in our series of articles please get in touch - we want to hear what your challenges are and see how we can help!

]]>2016-07-28T17:13:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/pokemon-go-is-taking-portland-by-storm
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/pokemon-go-is-taking-portland-by-storm#When:22:21:00ZIn Pokémon Go, monsters roam the lands, and your job is to find, capture and train them. The game uses your phone’s GPS for your real-world location and an augmented reality interface bring up those cool-looking Pokémon on your screen, overlaid on top of what you see in front of you. And you—the digital you—can be customized with clothing, a faction (or “team” of players you can join) and other options. As you play, you level up through the game.

Explore Your City

Just last evening, I decided to visit Laurelhurst park in Southeast Portland. The park is a bit out of the way for me, and I resent to say it - but after living in Portland for four years the only reason I have just now decided to visit this beautiful place was because of Pokémon Go. The game rewards you with extra valuable items or rare Pokémon for visiting unique places such as parks or monuments. Oregon Live recently compiled a google map of where to catch rare Pokémon in Portland. Shamelessly, I have walked over 75 kilometers since the game’s release. My dog loves it, and it is a much better use of my time than watching TV.

Foraging for Eggs in the Wild

In Pokémon Go, you usually find “eggs” in the “wild” - usually by interacting with various locations around town known as PokéStops. There are three different types of eggs you can encounter: a 10km egg, a 5km egg and the common 2km egg. The eggs are labeled in distances because - as you may have guessed - you have to walk the specified distance to hatch the egg. Once hatched, the egg rewards you with extra points and often Pokémon that you would be unable to find if you were just walking around your neighborhood.

Final Thoughts

I think the benefits of this new phenomenon far outway the downsides (mainly safety concerns). It forces you to be outside and walk around. It also forces you to be social. You can drop special items called “lure modules” at any PokéStop (most bars and parks are PokéStops) which attract Pokémon to that location. I have talked to countless people who I would have otherwise not talked to while trying to become a Pokémon Master.

With Drupal 8's change of theming engine from PHPTemplate to Twig, developers have more power and theme developers can develop faster.

Twig is the new theming engine in Drupal 8! PHPTemplate was removed due to no longer being actively maintained and with several security flaws. But instead of dreading the change to how themes work, developers should be excited about the change to Twig and what they can do with it. In this post, we'll talk about creating basic themes with Twig and the way that they work.

Starting a theme

Once you've set up your Drupal 8 site, you can use the Drupal console to generate a new theme:

<pre><br>
drupal generate:theme<br>
</pre>

While setting up your theme, you can include different theme regions and CSS breakpoints, and set a base theme to start from (like Bartik or Classy). Once it's created, it will appear in a custom themes directory for the Drupal installation you've created (/themes/custom/your_theme_here).

Template files and selecting a template

Once your theme is set up, you need to create a base template file to use, which is called <pre>html.html.Twig</pre> and should go in a directory called <pre>templates</pre> within your theme's root directory. This file is the most basic building block of your theme, and all other pieces start from there. If the theme you created is a sub-theme, you probably have this file already that was inherited from the parent theme. If needed, further templates can be created for individual pages, such as if you want a specific template for a content type, a certain ID of a content type, and if a piece of a certain content type is the front page of your Drupal site. This makes the template system of Twig very powerful, and its auto-selection of templates based off of file name makes creating new templates and extending your theme a snap. For naming conventions, you can check out this Drupal guide on Twig templates: https://www.drupal.org/node/2186401.

Adding CSS and JS to themes

In Drupal 8, adding a CSS or JS file is now handled through "libraries", which can be a collection of any CSS or JS in any amount. These entries go into a file called <pre>your_theme_here.libraries.yml</pre>. You can add an unlimited number of libraries to this file, and one of them can look like this example:

To use the library, you can either add it to the theme's <pre>*.info.yml</pre> file to make the library used across your entire theme, or add it to an individual template to be used on a single one. Theme hooks can also be used to define a certain subset of pages to add a library to.

Conclusion

Twig in Drupal is much richer than what we've covered here, but this is a good place to start setting up your theme and creating a great Drupal 8 experience. If you're still not sure, a good place to start is core's Bartik theme of Drupal under <pre>core/themes/bartik</pre>; it is a full theme for Drupal 8 that uses many templates and theme variables to help you get your own started.

]]>2016-07-25T19:26:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/on-site-seo-best-practices
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/on-site-seo-best-practices#When:16:58:00ZWe consider it our responsibility to help our clients succeed. It drives all our actions, and is the motivation for this blog post. We developed an On-site SEO Best Practices write-up to help our clients gain a good grasp of some SEO basics, and thought, why keep it secret? So we’ve adapted it into a blog post and are sharing it with our readers.

URL Naming Conventions

Individual words should be separated by dashes. Placing dashes between words helps Google differentiate those words and paints a clearer picture of what each page represents.

Also, abbreviations should be avoided whenever possible, unless the abbreviations are searched for more commonly than the full keywords themselves.

If possible, ensure that your URL includes the keyword(s) that you are optimizing that page for. Shorter URL’s are more user-friendly for site visitors to share so if you see an opportunity to remove unnecessary words, do it. If your site’s CMS automatically generates URLs for pages, take a look at them and clean them up if necessary (remove special characters and any word parts that don’t add meaning to the user).

Meta Titles

Meta titles should generally utilize 55 characters or less and convey a concise, descriptive overview of each page while also including important keywords. If you want to be really safe, keep to 49 words or less – that number drops to 40 or less if it’s in all caps.

A minimum of one keyword instance is mandatory within each title, although two can be safely used as well. Three or more instances of the same keyword begin to appear “spammy” and may trigger Google to flag your site for review and negatively impact your SEO.

Meta Descriptions

Meta descriptions should be viewed as a 160-character opportunity to make a sales pitch. They should be focused on attracting eyeballs while also maintaining a reasonable amount of descriptiveness toward the page or product. It is imperative to include the most important keyword at least once, and possibly twice, within each meta description. Utilizing an incentive or a slogan that differentiates you from your top competitors is a tactic that also works well.

Image Tagging Best Practices

All images on your site, just like written content, should be optimized for search engines. There are two primary ways of doing this: the alt tag and the title tag.

Alt tag: This is used exclusively by search engines to interpret the meaning of an image. Alt-tags should be concise and accurately describe the image, while also (if possible) including an important keyword. Alt-tags are not seen by real users and exist in the background coding of the website.

Title tag: This is used by humans (i.e. real users) who are browsing your site, and co-exists with the alt-tags. Conversely this text highly visible and appears when somebody hovers over an image (before clicking). This has minimal SEO value and should be written strictly with the user-experience in mind.

For large sites (like ecommerce) in which there is a large quantity of images, it is okay to use the same content for both alt tags and title tags. Both should be 60 characters or less. However, take the time to differentiate between them wherever feasible, especially on prominent pages like the homepage.

]]>2016-07-21T16:58:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/thank-you-to-jeff-and-oskar-our-rock-star-interns
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/thank-you-to-jeff-and-oskar-our-rock-star-interns#When:20:14:00ZAt GRAYBOX we believe internships have immense value. Maybe this is because they overlap with so many of our founding principles including helpfulness, education, collaboration, and diving into problems head-first to fix them. We’d like to say a hearty “thank you!” to our recent interns, Jeff Seymour and Oskar Radon.

We asked our interns to keep a weekly journal of their experiences at GRAYBOX to help us improve our internship program for future interns and to help Jeff and Oskar process what they were learning. Said Jeff about his first week:

“It was great to dive right in and work on a project that will benefit GRAYBOX, all while getting more back­end development experience programming and utilizing an API in PHP. I also got a quick hands-­on introduction to PHPMailer, SSH, and bash scripting. Overall, this first week as an intern was awesome!”

GRAYBOX’s internship program is a 5-week hands-on internship where two promising budding professionals are mentored and put to work coding side-by-side with GRAYBOX’s senior developers. We agree with Inc. Magazine’s proclamation that, “the gofer intern is a thing of the past, especially if you want top talent.” While all staff are expected to pitch in with the occasional mundane task, we believe in including our interns in tackling real coding problems and projects that will directly benefit GRAYBOX and clients in the real world.

Working on real projects gives interns a taste of what it’s really like to work as a developer, respects their talent and what they bring to the table, and allows GRAYBOX to benefit from the engagement while also educating our interns.

Instead of one big project, GRAYBOX interns get to touch many projects in their term here. This allows them to see how various projects and bugs are approached. The last week of their internship, Oskar journaled:

“I ended up figuring out the fix on Wednesday, and it was an immensely gratifying feeling to have contributed to styling a site that will be seen by thousands of people. Not to mention to have figured out a particularly challenging problem –­ one of the best feelings in the world!”

Many companies see internships as a preferred way of sourcing talent. If there is a team opening, the internship could be used as an extended interview that allows potential candidates and employers to test the waters before signing. At GRAYBOX our team openings don’t always align with our internship programs, but it does happen – in fact two of our current staff started as interns. Brett Moore, Jr Web Developer on our Technical team and Tom Mertz, Jr Web Developer on our Support team both interned with GRAYBOX and were hired after their internships.

Brett and Tom, as well as Jeff and Oskar, all honed their coding knowledge through Epicodus. Epicodus is a four month, forty hour per week, in-person class on programming aimed at getting students a job as a web developer or app developer.

To give you one last glimpse into what kinds of things interns get to do at GRAYBOX, we’d like to leave you with this account from Jeff:

“At the end of the day today, we'll go down to the Hungry Tiger to have a beer and hang out for a bit. It's weird how fast this last 5 weeks went by! I had a great time interning at GRAYBOX. I learned a great deal of valuable information and skills here. On the back end I picked up some PHP, got some more experience working with the Unix shell, servers, SSH, Vagrant, creating local development environments, and various other useful concepts. On the front end, I was able to help code out some new features that will be implemented to the GRAYBOX website, and fix a bug or two on client sites.

Even with things that did not involve coding, such as the password migration and some other support tasks, I think Oskar and I were able to contribute a good deal to GRAYBOX. It was also very interesting getting a feel for how creative web companies like GRAYBOX work, how they handle the development process, and to see all that it takes to create awesome solutions for their clients. Overall, I had a blast. Thank you everyone at GRAYBOX for this awesome experience!”

If you’re a junior developer looking for an internship, we’d love to hear from you. Please get in touch!

]]>2016-07-20T20:14:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/measuring-on-page-user-interactions-on-shopify
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/measuring-on-page-user-interactions-on-shopify#When:17:45:00ZSo you have a Shopify site; great! Now to figuring out what people are actually doing on your site. The first place you should turn to is a standard analytics tool like Google Analytics to check out site performance.

There's a ton of actionable insights to glean through Google Analytics' [relatively] intuitive interface. You can gauge how users got to your site, and see where they went within the site. Where analytics packages like Google Analytics fall short, though, is giving you any visibility into what people did on specific pages.In this blog post, we’ll go through how to measure on-page interactions within a Shopify site. The examples included are all from one of our clients, Aries Apparel, who graciously allowed us to show some of the data collected on their site.

Enter Heatmap Analytics

Getting clear visuals into how users are moving around within a page can be immensely valuable in making improvements to your Shopify site that increase engagement and lead to conversions. The whole point of building a site on Shopify is to generate ecommerce, so converting visitors into customers is going to be a top concern amongst Shopify merchants.

Heatmap analytics help answer some core questions that aren’t typically answerable by tools like Google Analytics, such as:

Are users interacting with the content you want them to be?

How successful are those long-form pages that your staff thinks are great; are users actually getting to the bottom of the page?

Where are users falling off on key conversion pages?

Which of the multiple pathways to products/content are working?

What is a user’s mouse doing on my site?

Seeing is Believing

Answering these sorts of questions is relatively straightforward if you can see someone’s behavior on your site pages. Heatmap analytics tools typically report data through several different site overlays to show analytics for a range of user mouse behaviors.

1. Mouse Movement - Actual eye-tracking studies indicate that users’ eyes follow their mouse pointer. If we’re able to track the movement of someone’s mouse, then we can gauge with accuracy where their eyes are going. The Mouse Movement view aggregates where users’ mouse pointer is traveling on the site regardless of whether or not they click something. This report applies primarily to desktop viewports (i.e. users on desktop/laptop computers) since the software cannot track a finger on a touch-based device unless it’s touching the screen.

2. Mouse Clicks - This reporting feature tracks individual clicks. Being able to see the gaps between where people move their mouse and ultimately click can provide insight into how effective different areas of the site are at getting someone to take an action. Like the example below, you can also see unexpected places where users are clicking that may lead to falloff in the conversion flow.

3. Scroll Reach - This reports on how far down the page users are scrolling. This can tell you how effective your page is at drawing users in and keeping their attention. We typically expect to see the warmest areas at the top of the page and a relatively smooth gradient down the page into the cooler colors.

4. Attention - This looks at where users spend time with their cursor. In a way, it offers similar insights as scroll reach, but on a more granular scale. If you compare the example below with the Scroll Reach report, you can see that folks are concentrating most of their attention in the top area of the Product Detail Page (aka the “shop box”) where the primary product description, detail images, and options exist.

5. Screen Recordings - Think of this as the 2016 equivalent of standing at the entrance to your physical retail store and observing how people who walk into your store walk around, interact with product, and where they get stuck. Screen recordings record the actions of a user entering your site and navigating around within it.

If you're interested in reading others' studies and learning more about customer behavior within the physical retail environment, there are several books on the topic – we recommend Paco Underhill’s excellent book, Why We Buy. If you're interested in gathering primary research on customer behavior within your ecommerce site, we suggest diving into digital screen recordings from real users on your Shopify site.

Actually seeing individual [anonymized] users on your site as they navigate around and interact with page elements can be fascinating and eye-opening. This observation of customers in the wild within the habitat of your site is, in a way, like the Jane Goodall effect, named after the pioneering primatologist who spent her time observing chimps in their natural habitat to gain insight on their behavior.

By drilling down to specific screen recordings on pages where you have desired actions for customers (e.g. checkout, signing up for offer emails) you can essentially run anonymous user testing in a way that eliminates the potential for testing bias or data skews (see what I did there? Skews? SKUs? nevermind…)

Tool Recommendations

There are a handful of solid tools out there at various price points that should fit virtually any site size and scale. We’ve used Hotjar and Mouseflow before and they both work effectively. Keep in mind that some tools like CrazyEgg (which has been around a while) are focused on click-based heatmaps only. Click-based tools don’t offer the same level of mouse tracking you’ll get from other more powerful tools.

Installing a heatmap tool on Shopify is really straightforward. For example, here are detailed instructions for how to install Mouseflow onto your Shopify site. The steps should be doable for anyone with the most basic of HTML skills.

Wrap-up

The opportunities to use heatmap analytics to gain actionable insights are numerous on Shopify – or any other website or ecommerce platform for that matter. We use heatmap analytics to inform efforts at several stages of a website’s “lifecycle.”

For example, before we start doing a redesign we can use heatmap analytics to see what user tendencies are now. When auditing an existing site, heatmapping allows us to see where the greatest opportunities and points of friction are. When we have just launched a site, and are interested in collecting user data to help gauge overall success, heatmapping covers that base as well.

Given the relative inexpensiveness of heatmapping tools, it’s hard to find a reason to not try them on for a month or two to see what insights you can find.

Building any kind of website is not a simple endeavor, and the latest major upgrade of Drupal to version 8 has only further solidified that truth. Even if you knew Drupal 7 you’re in trouble because the biggest difference from version 7 to 8 is...well...pretty much everything.

In this article we’ll take a focused look at Drupal 8’s new technologies. We’re not going to cover any of the specifics of installing and setting up Drupal 8, or the logic behind theme and sub-theme creation – plenty of other sites cover these topics and offer tutorials. Instead we’re going to look at YAML and Twig.

YAML

Where does YAML fit in? After Drupal is installed and the initial setup is complete, you start up your theme environment which ties everything together. In previous versions of Drupal, there were the all-important .info files which allowed you to configure all the necessary elements to make your Drupal theme function. Now instead of .info, it’s all YAML. Welcome to the new world.

What is YAML?

"YAML™ (rhymes with “camel”) is a human-friendly, cross language, Unicode based data serialization language designed around the common native data structures of agile programming languages. It is broadly useful for programming needs ranging from configuration files to Internet messaging to object persistence to data auditing. Together with the Unicode standard for characters, the YAML specification provides all the information necessary to understand YAML Version 1.2 and to creating programs that process YAML information." [source: yaml.org/spec/]

So, if you’re familiar with JSON, YAML is JSON on steroids and offers more features and, some would argue, is easier on the eyes.

An example of a YAML file contents would look something like this...

This YAML file will reside in your custom theme folder and will govern how everything is referenced and mapped including items like your libraries (css, js, etc.) and the different template blocks that you create.

Twig

The next big change from Drupal 7 to 8 is the move from PHPTemplate to Symfony2 (specifically Twig as the implementation) as the framework and language you use when building/customizing your Drupal 8 theme.

What is Symfony?

What is (Drupal) Twig?

"Twig is a PHP-based compiled templating language…” "The Drupal Twig initiative shares the same motivation as the Symfony initiative: to adopt a modern, powerful, OOP-based engine that will allow developers to concentrate on Drupal proper." [source https://www.drupal.org/node/1918824]

Some of the bigger distinguishing characteristics of Twig when you look at the code is the use of the double curly brackets...

{{ page.content }}

…and the curly bracket with a percentage sign...

{% if something.here %}<div>Something shows</div>{% endif %}

Here’s an example of Twig from a template page on a Drupal 8 site theme:

The change that Twig brings to Drupal coding is substantially different from Drupal versions 7 and earlier because that it changes how you create your templates. The learning curve of Drupal 8 is medium to high depending on your familiarity with Symfony and/or Twig. With each new version, the folks at Drupal have made decisions to use certain technologies to improve the CMS platform. With this update, they have decided to essentially strip down the core Drupal platform and then rebuild it using a new paradigm.

Impact

Whether this big shift works in the long run or not remains to be seen. The biggest barrier to-date standing in the way of large-scale Drupal 8 adoption is that developers are still working on getting their modules and extensions Drupal 8-ready. This gap will be filled as more and more users adopt Drupal as a CMS or upgrade their Drupal sites and the demand for Drupal 8-ready plugins grows.

All the signs indicate that Drupal 8 is already a big hit and will continue to gain both new adopters as well as those currently on previous versions of the CMS platform.

Drupal 8, the newest version of the Drupal Content Management System (CMS), was officially released on November 19, 2015. It boasts an impressive list of new features, most notably multilingual support, responsive / mobile first design, and enhanced content authoring tools. In a previous blog post, we explored whether Drupal 8 was ready for the limelight, and now let’s take a look at Drupal 8’s adoption and timeline for its future.

Drupal 8 Adoption

“How’s Drupal 8 Doing?” is a question that gets asked frequently online. Particularly now that Drupal 8 has been officially released for seven months and migration decisions need to be made. Dries Buytaert, founder of the Drupal CMS, posted some interesting statistics. In the first four months after its release, Drupal 8 had over 60,000 sites reporting to Drupal.org, which was twice as much as the 30,000 sites four months after the release of Drupal 7.

At first this appears incredible, though some have brought up the fact that Drupal has a lot more users now and that this number is actually a smaller percentage of the Drupal user base, indicating that Drupal 8 adoption is slightly slower than its older sibling.

Below is a graph from Drupal.org showing the number of different Drupal site versions over time:

The reason for Drupal 8’s slower adoption is understandable. A lot of the core of Drupal has changed in version 8, which is one of the most ambitious redesigns of Drupal yet. The core is now based on an entirely different framework call Symfony, a powerful and robust object oriented platform. It will take developers time to relearn Drupal development on this new platform, so modules that users know and love will take longer to port to Drupal 8. It took Drupal 7 about nine months to really take off and it will be interesting to see if Drupal 8 follows the same pattern.

Currently at version 8.1.3, Drupal 8 developers are quickly adding functionality from beloved Drupal 7 modules.

Drupal 6: End-of-Life and Upgrading

On February 24, support for Drupal 6 officially ended. What this essentially means is that no more security fixes will be offered, leaving Drupal 6 sites vulnerable to attacks unless professionals that offer paid support are hired. As can been seen on the Drupal version usage graph above, Drupal 6 has been on the decline slowly since 2013. Companies running Drupal 6 are deciding whether to upgrade to Drupal 7 or Drupal 8. The decision is complex because of where Drupal 8 is in its development cycle, but here are a few tips to finding the right version.

Drupal 8 is the Future

When weighing the pro’s and con’s between Drupal 7 vs Drupal 8, it’s not much of a contest. Whenever possible you should be using Drupal 8 as that is the forward-looking solution, and you’ll save yourself from having to go through an upgrade soon. Drupal 8 sites can always be added to as more of the modules port. If you know your site is going to be complex with a lot of modules and custom code, consider launching a site with what’s available now and then revisiting it in 6 months to see if any new Drupal 8 tools have been rolled out which you could take advantage of.

]]>2016-07-11T14:59:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/Portland-Fastest-Growing-Companies-GRAYBOX-Award
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/Portland-Fastest-Growing-Companies-GRAYBOX-Award#When:06:57:00ZWe are stoked to share that GRAYBOX received an award from the Portland Business Journal for placing 9th among the fastest growing private companies in Portland in June of 2016! We have grown more than 300% in the last two years and we chalk that success to our common belief in helpfulness.

It’s not just GRAYBOX that believes in being helpful - it is a defining trait of Portland. People on the streets are polite and friendly. Portlanders also care for the environment, engage with the community, and fiercely celebrate local artists, local business owners, and local craftspeople. So it’s not surprising that our fearless leader, PDX native Paul Weinert, would start a digital technology consulting firm and adopt helpfulness as its core value. What might surprise people is how much it’s paid off.

An Emphasis on Partnerships, Not Projects

We enter our clients’ lives at a really interesting point – a point at which they decide to invest in themselves. We see ourselves as stewards of our client’s investments, so we’re very focused on working hard, producing great work and doing it in a spirit of genuine helpfulness.

GRAYBOX forges partnerships with clients that reach beyond the project at hand. As a digital technology consulting firm, we don’t merely execute a project and then disappear. A company’s website is just one component of what can and should be a sophisticated digital system. GRAYBOX’s solutions have far-reaching impacts into our clients’ businesses including digital marketing presence, business operations, sales, content development and mobile apps. Custom-built digital solutions can automate processes for clients to relieve admin staff, and empower management with the data and marketing tools needed to attain growth goals.

At GRAYBOX, we believe in partnerships, not projects. If a client only chooses to do one project with us, we have missed an opportunity to be there for the client long-term. GRAYBOX is founded on a desire to help businesses succeed – we want to be there for our clients. We’re proud to be able to say that we’ve sustained a client retention rate of 95% and most clients have been with us for years. You could think of us as serial monogamists.

Portland as a Concept

Portland is a city that operates on trust, reputation, and authenticity. GRAYBOX is 100-percent focused on working with companies in the Portland area and are supremely optimistic about the future of the region.

The uniquely attractive culture of Portland flows in our veins, and consequently we have attracted talent from corners of the world far and wide. We come from the Northwest. We come from the East Coast. We come from Ecuador, Ukraine, and France. But we all have one thing in common - we love working for GRAYBOX.

Moving on Up

GRAYBOX has grown so drastically since 2012 that we are soon relocating offices for the fourth times in seven years. Every previous office has been near Portland’s burgeoning Southeast industrial corridor. GRAYBOX’s earnest, no-frills ethos feels at home among the small manufacturers and other start-ups in the neighborhood. We move into our fourth office in the late summer of this year, located in the beautifully renovated Olympic Mills Building. We can’t wait to soak in the view from the 7th floor and fire up the grill on our 2,000 sq. ft. deck!

]]>2016-06-24T06:57:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/apple-pay-for-ecommerce-boon-for-mobile-conversions
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/apple-pay-for-ecommerce-boon-for-mobile-conversions#When:19:22:00Z
Buried in Apple’s announcements at their 2016 Worldwide Developer Conference was a nugget of interest to anyone to has an ecommerce site: Apple Pay would soon be possible as a payment method on ecommerce websites.

Up until this point, Apple Pay has only been possible for in-store purchases using the latest iPhones and/or Apple Watch or for purchases in-app. With their newly-released API, the possibility of integrating Apple Pay directly into ecommerce websites is here and the implications are huge, especially for sites with high mobile traffic.

Why? The more clumsy the check-out experience, the greater likelihood a company will lose the sale. The most influential factor in how streamlined an ecommerce transaction feels is the design of the check-out experience – and it’s hard to get right. This is the reason that mobile ecommerce conversion rates are a paltry 1.43% here in the US, which is one-third of what they are on desktop (source: Monetate Ecommerce Quarterly, 2016).

However, close behind that is the inconvenience of having to dig out a credit card mid-check-out to complete the sale. While the customer is locating their credit card they have the opportunity to change their mind about the purchase, feel insecure about entering their credit card information, become frustrated while entering it, be annoyed at having to locate their wallet, accidentally navigate away from the site, or become distracted by any other number of things on or off the phone. Removing this credit-card halt in the check-out process can vastly improve the purchase experience, and could have big implications for it’s possible positive impact on sales.

Quick and Easy Mobile Payments: Solving the Last Mile Problem

The push to better mobile optimized (and, to a lesser extent, tablet) experiences has been critical and challenging for brands everywhere. There is an almost constant need to stay abreast of trends in login technology and functionality to keep up with a growing array of devices – nevermind the
potential impact on SEO. Convincing companies to make a significant investment to improve their mobile ecommerce experiences, though, has been a challenge given the meager conversion metrics and the sometimes-significant effort in making a site work effectively on mobile.

Solving for the last mile — getting people to actually finish transactions on their mobile devices — has been the problem. There just hasn’t been anything making the process of entering your personal and credit card information especially easy.

According to Apple, Apple Pay for websites will be just that...easy.

For the 700-800 credit cards on file with Apple, it will be as simple as clicking an Apple Pay button at checkout on a site that supports it. Because Apple Pay leverages the Passbook app on your phone and is connected to your iTunes account, all your info is stored securely and is accessible with Apple’s built-in Touch ID fingerprint identification. What amounts to a one-click checkout will encourage reluctant shoppers and undoubtedly lead to increases in the number of folks who convert.

Apple Pay for Ecommerce Rollout

Apple just released the API documentation for how to integrate Apple Pay into ecommerce sites going forward, but it will be 3-5 months before we’re seeing any widespread use of it. It certainly won’t be a one-click install for most, but will have widespread support from a wide array of payment gateways.

Shopify is one of the early adopters and will be rolling it out Fall 2016 to its nearly 300,000 merchants as a one-click install and will support their in-house payment gateway, as well as Stripe, Braintree, FirstData Payeezy, Authorize.Net, and CyberSource.

Device Support

Not everyone will be able to take advantage of Apple Pay immediately. Use of the technology will be limited to devices running iOS 10 or macOS Sierra and using the Safari web browser. Requiring Safari seems like a potential deal-breaker for anything expecting widespread rollout across devices, but it’s obvious the focus here is primarily on mobile devices.

While Apple Safari only represents 4% of overall desktop traffic, it accounts for 55% of all mobile traffic and accounts for 85% of all traffic from iOS devices (source: StatCounter).

The potential benefit of enabling what is essentially a one-click payment solution for everyone who owns an iOS device is significant and will lead to adoption rates much higher than other competing solutions (Amazon and Google, I’m looking at you) that have struggled to gain significant traction in the wider ecommerce world.

A Peek Into Implementing Apple Pay on Your Ecommerce Site

Support for Apple Pay via open-source ecommerce and CMS platforms like Magento, Wordpress, and ExpressionEngine will eventually be widespread once folks start integrating it regularly. For hosted platforms like Demandware and Shopify, it’ll be available for all their merchants nearly immediately once they support Apple Pay later in 2016.

As folks start integrating Apple Pay into their sites, regardless of what platform they’re on, it will also be important to consider where in the conversion flow it should go. While it’ll be necessary to include Apple Pay at the cart/checkout steps, there are also opportunities for promoting it upstream in the mobile conversion flow, such as on the homepage or product detail pages.

There’s a decade-long history of poor mobile experiences out there and it’ll take time for folks to retrain themselves and look out for Apple Pay before otherwise deciding to bail and [maybe] come back on their desktop device.

Final Thoughts on Apple Pay

The introduction of Apple Pay support for ecommerce sites in 2016 is going to be a big deal for a wide diversity of merchant businesses out there. For new customers or existing ones who don’t know and/or want to remember their account login details the widespread adoption of a quick and easy mobile payment solution will redefine what it means to have an effective mobile-optimized ecommerce experience.

At GRAYBOX, we are following the Apple Pay rollout and will look forward sinking our collective teeth into rolling it out for clients in 2016 and beyond.

This fact owes largely to the ever-growing marketplace of Shopify themes as well as a plethora of ecommerce website-builders all offering a simplistic WYSYWYG style of design. In merely a few clicks you can begin carving out your niche, forging a trustworthy online presence, and intuitively selling your inventory.

"In merely a few clicks you can begin carving out your niche, forging a trustworthy online presence, and intuitively selling your inventory." (CLICK TO TWEET)

However, there is considerable competition. There are roughly 12 million storefronts nationwide, of which 650,000 maintain ecommerce websites that generate more than $1,000 in sales revenue per year. Defying these odds presents a tremendous challenge, especially to a business owner with little to no web development experience. How can it be done?

GRAYBOX suggests that you consider the following five steps when choosing a website theme to enhance your webstore and its niche. Doing so will captivate your users, ultimately gain their trust, and thus increase conversion rates and overall sales.

What kind of website are you creating?

Who will be creating or managing your webstore?

Feature selections: “must-have” vs. “nice to have”

How trustworthy is the theme’s developer?

Testing

Step 1. Think about your business and what kind of website you’re creating.

Let’s start with the basics. Before you begin, ask yourself what type of website you’ll be creating. Since this is a Shopify webstore, chances are it’s an ecommerce website of some kind. However, you need to be more specific in your genre declaration. Are you selling directly to a consumer, or are you strictly B2B (business to business)? What type of product will you be selling? Several products or thousands? Is your company more than just a storefront, i.e., resourceful in your given market?

The answers to these questions influence the importance of a couple of key content categories:

Imagery: If your products are artistic, visually nuanced, or collector’s items, you will want a plethora of highly-detailed images to upload into your webstore, thereby providing your customers with the ability to zoom in on your products. If you are selling raw materials, perhaps to another business, imagery is likely to be less critical to your success.

Copy: Copy is important in every genre of webstore from product descriptions to company history pages to the content of your homepage slideshow to promotional blocks. However, extra care and time should be placed on copy when your business is viewed as an informational resource. Do you have informative blog posts ready to be published with the release of your site? Or forum topics? How about an entire collection of industry-related informational articles to embed?

Supplemental site features / modules: If you are leaning more toward an informational ecommerce store, you will want a blog and perhaps even a forum if you are expecting an active customer community.

If you are an existing and successful business, but new to the web, it behooves you to ensure that your theme supports user reviews on your products. This allows you to encourage previous customers to visit your online store and write positive reviews, therefore further bolstering your credibility while increasing online conversion rates and sales.

Step 2. Ask yourself: Who will be creating / managing the webstore?

Will you be managing all development in your new webstore, or will you be deferring development to a web developer? If you choose to fly solo and captain the ship yourself, consider your own web development experience and all possible future updates and fixes that will need to happen with your webstore. Do you honestly have the time and the skill to handle all requests? It can quickly become very time consuming. Do you have the capability to make calculated decisions on purchasing and installing future plugins or add-ons with the theme you choose?

How you answer these questions will greatly assist in your search for the perfect theme, while also minimizing costs. If you have scant web development experience, yet choose to handle the duties yourself, we recommend that you automatically choose a top tier paid theme.

Spending a few extra dollars now on a well-developed theme could save you thousands very quickly down the road.

"Spending a few extra dollars now on a well-developed theme could save you thousands very quickly down the road." (CLICK TO TWEET)

If you are deferring to a developer, converse with them to gain insight on select features. You may be able to save cost by discarding themes that ship with features your developer deems unnecessary.

Step 3. Separate the “must-have” vs. “nice to have” features.

The next step is to create a list of features that you will or will not need. But first, there are some additional items to think about:

Search the theme’s page for specific screenshots that show the Theme Options. This is a crucial feature. Lacking in this area presents trouble when attempting to modify the theme, and you MUST be a developer to even think about adding new fields to Theme Options. This is your only toolbox, so make sure it will have everything you will need, or close to it.

Take the “Theme’s Feature List” with a grain of salt. These are used for selling the theme to you, and are often worded skillfully to accomplish that goal. Be smart and dig deep for the real features - you’ll be glad in the end.

Easier to remove features rather than add them. The most important area is almost always the slider and its available options. This is the first visual that users see when arriving on your website, and you more flexibility to manipulate this area as much as possible is desirable. Ideally you should be able to add a video, dynamically link a slide to a product, add a background image, add a foreground image, etc. This is a common area where developers at GRAYBOX are constantly adding features for clients whose themes ship with minimal flexibility, in turn adding significant costs to the webstore through custom development fees.

Branding Guidelines / available media – Start assessing your webstore/companies’ collection of media. This gives you a solid assessment of content gaps, which makes it easier to evaluate, simulate, and predict how your media would look within the theme you choose.

Features To Spotlight

Here is a short list of features to consider that will separate the merely okay themes from the great themes:

Responsive Design

This is a must-have regardless of your situation; it’s 2016 now and there are more mobile users on the web than desktop users. Don’t take the theme’s feature list word for it, test it yourself on different devices you have at your own disposal.

Homepage Promo Blocks

Scan for a theme option that allows you to edit blocks of text and imagery on your store’s homepage. Ideally, this feature would allow you to set informational blocks with a background image, headline, paragraph, or sentence, and a link to a page or product.

The key area where most themes fall short is only allowing you to upload images, then expecting you to embed the informational text within said image rather than dynamically entering it in a field in the theme’s options.

This extra bit of functionality saves a ton of time while also amplifying SEO performance.

(screenshot of Aries Apparel’s theme options for the home page, showcasing numerous options for the homepage slider and promo blocks)

Free Upgrades

The web is a crazy and ever-changing realm of new technologies. Thus, developers are constantly improving and even re-writing entire existing themes on new programmatically platforms and frameworks. Having a theme developer who promises free feature / theme upgrades is very enticing from both a monetary and stability standpoint.

Step 4. Read the documentation & user reviews

Most of the time these include how-to screenshots for Theme Option features that ship with the theme. Do these make sense to you? Think of it like you’re popping the hood on a car; this flexibility and extensibility is the bulk of what you are purchasing.

Reviews – Whether you are handling your website entirely independently or conversely hiring a shop, quick communication with the theme developer is critical. This can usually be determined quickly by skimming reviews. It is a severe detriment if a theme offers support only via its online support forum, which can easily become a shady and unresponsive place. Often times developers and shops “close” the support forum and open select issues that are easily resolved to give themselves a false appearance of support. There have been a few instances where GRAYBOX has tried to contact the theme’s developer due to a bug in their theme, only to never have our support ticket even accepted in the first place. In short, more support mediums offered to you is always better..

After “trusting” the theme creator, take a look at their other work/themes. This is also useful for gauging their expertise, and you might find an alternate theme you prefer.

Are there any live websites utilizing the current theme you’re considering? Compare the demo website vs. the live website: how well do the features match up? Can you make any connections with what you are seeing versus some of the screenshots from the Theme Options?

Step 5. Testing

Immerse yourself in your new theme. Investigate every template and pre-made page that it claims to ship. Does it look good on your 27” iMac? How about on mobile devices? Do you like the way the menu behaves on your mobile device? Is it easy to use? How about on a landscape display versus a portrait display? If you’ve made it this far, chances are you’re closing in on purchasing your new theme.

Bottom Line: Function over form.

I cannot possibly stress how much this phrase directly relates to picking a Shopify theme. The vast majority of themes already appear in their best possible form within the demo site, so focus your attention instead on functionality, extendibility, and customization. Dissecting and hyper-focusing on the nuances of appearance should be saved for later stages in your quest for the perfect webstore theme.

In other words, allow the flashiness of your theme to serve as a supplemental catalyst to success, but not the cornerstone.

"Allow the flashiness of your theme to serve as a supplemental catalyst to success, but not the cornerstone."(CLICK TO TWEET)

]]>2016-06-15T16:00:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/is-drupal-8-ready-for-primetime-yet
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/is-drupal-8-ready-for-primetime-yet#When:16:18:00ZDrupal 8 launched in November, 2015 and boasts an impressive list of new features and goals as a content management system (CMS):

Simplified content authoring experience

API-driven content approach

Rest-first native web services

Seamless integration with existing technologies

Multilingual features and capabilities

Responsive by nature and mobile-first

From an end-user and site administration perspective, the updates in Drupal 8 check a ton of boxes and presents a welcome overall change, especially in responsive/mobile-first approach and expanded support for multiple languages.

Drupal 8 Development

With the update, the Drupal platform has come a long way in catching up with other major PHP software applications in streamlining the development process. One of the most anticipated adaptations of the new Drupal 8 is the Symfony PHP framework. It is a PHP-based web application framework that follows the MVC architecture.

Moreover, it is an open source project that has been released under the MIT license. This gives Drupal 8 a desirable Object Oriented structure, making module development much more powerful while extending the Drupal platform.

Expansion of the Drupal 8 Ecosystem

While architectural and technical changes abound, Drupal 8 has also brought social changes with more than 4,500 developers, companies, and organizations collaborating to launch the most significant software update to Drupal ever. The broad reach and diversity of the folks working together is a testament to the unwavering stability of the Drupal community. The full impact of these efforts have yet to be seen, but with time the implications of this new direction will have an undeniably positive impact.

Streamlined Development

Another welcome addition is that Drupal 8 has out-of-the-box support for the Composer dependency manager. You can also install your whole Drupal project using Composer:

Overall, the Drupal 8 platform is not equipped for novices just yet, but if you’re familiar with the Symfony framework and object oriented principles, you can create powerful web solutions for your customers. and while many of the modules are still in transition, others are currently in an "alpha-state” even after the April 2016 release of Drupal 8.1.

Depending on your level of involvement within the Drupal community this could be ideal or could present challenges during the development process. Whether you consider yourself an early adopter or a bit more conservative, it’s probably best to choose Drupal 8 when its maturity aligns with your sense of investment and your project’s life cycle.

Launched in 2004, Shopify now boasts roughly 275,000 stores, an integrated POS solution, mobile apps, and a healthy ecosystem of plugins and extensions. Most smaller ecommerce businesses (under $5 million in annual revenue) are either already using it or have considered it. Historically, Shopify has not been an option for the enterprise-level, robust ecommerce players because it still suffers from a lack of features - namely data flexibility, integrations, and organization problems. Meanwhile, larger companies remain focused on more flexible and powerful products like Magento, Demandware (soon to be Salesforce Commerce Cloud), Hybris, and Adobe Marketing Cloud.

About a year ago, Shopify released a new product to simultaneously target this market, simply named Shopify Plus. It is a completely different way of managing enterprise-grade ecommerce — rather than focusing on power and flexibility, they’ve doubled down on support, scale, and stability to accommodate large-value merchants who DON’T want to think about their ecommerce store.

Here are the benefits and key features of Shopify Plus in comparison to Shopify (all features of Shopify still apply).

Built as an extension to Shopify, so it’s just as easy to use and manage.

No per transaction fees (credit card processing fees still apply).

Advanced ecommerce reporting and analytics.

White glove onboarding and service with a dedicated account manager.

24x7 application and configuration support.

The most notable new addition is direct support from Shopify. However, they also have an extensive network of implementation partners — like GRAYBOX — that provide more hands on implementation and technical support. Consequently if you operate a large ecommerce store and you are willing to trade some flexibility for scale, support, and stability, we advise you to give your consideration to Shopify Plus.

]]>2016-06-13T19:17:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/portland-prove-your-soccer-passion
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/portland-prove-your-soccer-passion#When:20:26:00Z
It's on. Beginning today, soccer fans across the globe turn their collective eyes to France as the highly-anticipated European Cup finally kicks off. Simultaneously, in a separate tournament, the USA national team is battling in the prestigious Copa America tournament.

Will you be watching?

It is well known that Portland, Oregon feasts gluttonously on soccer, and has long since earned the nickname “Soccer City” as a result. Pride for the Portland Timbers flows through the veins of the city, and Timbers fans are undeniably the loudest and most committed in the country. However, Portland still lags behind global cities in support for international events. The time has come for Portland residents to prove their true passion for soccer by extending that raucous energy extend into international tournaments as well.

Are you not feeling especially passionate about these tournaments? Here’s my advice: pick a team, or multiple teams, and throw yourself into the culture of becoming a genuine supporter. After all, it is the culture of being a soccer fan that makes the experience so unique and so fun compared to other sports. I personally have a foreign background as a first generation French immigrant, and my heart is forever in Paris at the Parc des Princes. However, I also ravenously support the USA team in tournaments. Two teams. Two continents. Too much fun.

It is truly okay to support multiple teams in international soccer events (I promise!), especially when that support amplifies your overall interest and enjoyment.

That is the essence of soccer. It ties together people and generations. A genuine soccer fan can travel anywhere in the world and converse with people of any nationality and age, in any language, about the exploits of Pelé and Maradona. Through soccer, there are suddenly no more borders or barriers in the world - just the amazing skills, the screaming stadiums, the eternal moments, and the beautiful game.

If you are like me, you are always seeking the perfect soccer-friendly location to enjoy a match, regardless of who you support. Here are my favorite soccer bars in Portland, and please do not hesitate to add to my list through your comments below:

4-4-2

1739 SE Hawthorne Blvd., Portland, OR 97214

The Horse Brass

4534 SE Belmont St., Portland, OR 97215

Kells Irish Restaurant

112 SW 2nd Ave, Portland, OR 97204

Caffè Umbria (When Italy is playing)

303 NW 12th Ave, Portland, OR 97209

"A football team is like a beautiful woman.

When you do not tell her, she forgets she is beautiful."

-Arsène Wenger

"In his life, a man can change wives,

political parties or religions but

he cannot change his favourite soccer team."

-Eduardo Hughes Galeano

]]>2016-06-10T20:26:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/how-to-improve-quality-assurance
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/how-to-improve-quality-assurance#When:16:59:00Z
"You will be the goalkeeper of our company".

Those were the powerful words spoken to me the first day I was hired, and this analogy sums up very succinctly the role of quality assurance within a company. The QA team is the last line of defense before something nefarious pierces the perimeter and starts negatively affecting everything valuable inside: usability, clients, reputation, etc.

Quality is Everything

There is a well-known saying within QA professional circles that states the bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of meeting the schedule has been forgotten. In other words, quality is everything. Therefore creating or discovering a bug is not criticizing someone's work, but rather enhancing it. The tests done by the QA team on a single item are drastically more intensive and objective compared to what a developer can perform on his or her own work. Finding bugs is the natural outcome of this action, and consequently quality and customer experience are elevated.

”the bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of meeting the schedule has been forgotten”(CLICK TO TWEET)

If you don’t like unit testing your product, most likely your customers won’t like to test it either. Save everybody the aggravation and test all the things.

Have a Plan

So - what are the primary steps to performing QA efficiently?

Know the Product

Take the time to genuinely wrap your mind around what you are testing, as well as what might be the future implementations. After that, dive headfirst into probing for possible issues. Do your best to break something.

Know the Target

An informational website, a music streaming app, and an eCommerce platform are fundamentally different products. The targets of these products are quite different as well. Utilize analytics to determine the target, put yourself in their shoes, and attempt to view the product through the end-users eyes (admin, user, and all other possible roles).

Define the Scope

Some testing efforts require a limited scope, whereas others require an expansive scope. Sometimes the scope can be paradoxical - a small change might affect many more components than what is visible to the end user. Always take a high-level view and consider the big picture.

Define your Weapons

What devices need to be tested? Will this QA benefit any automated testing? What issue tracker am I going to use? Will there be recurring testing on this product? Multiple languages? How many testers are on the project? Who will fix and regress the defects? These questions will help you choose the necessary ammo.

Create your Test Cases

From test cases to checklist, it is of dire importance to track what was tested, what needs to be tested, what portions had issues, what needs to be regressed, what needs to be re-tested, etc. This is your game plan, your attack, and your exit strategy.

The Lesson

Testing during production is not testing. Commit to a QA process and test everything! And whatever you do...don't be this guy:

]]>2016-04-05T16:59:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/email-marketing-for-ecommerce
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/email-marketing-for-ecommerce#When:16:02:00Z
Don’t believe the haters:
email marketing still works. The proof is here, there, everywhere. And nothing works quite as well as ecommerce email marketing! It is a revenue faucet; turn that spigot on for revenue on demand. The best part? It is cheaper and easier than paid search and converts much better than social media. If you're operating an ecommerce store, and you’re not generating stacks upon stacks of sales via email then you have serious work to do.

”Email Marketing for ecommerce is a revenue faucet; turn that spigot on for revenue on demand.”(CLICK TO TWEET)

Technology powering email marketing has advanced in recent years and marketers have simultaneously improved their skills. This has resulted in increased ecommerce sales. Ecommerce email marketing has become so complex many shoppers assume websites know more about them than they actually do.

Studies suggest Internet shoppers are frustrated by irrelevant ads and marketing campaigns. That is, those that do not match their tastes or shopping habits. Put another way, meat lovers don’t want to receive emails about kale.

In this post, we’ll explore a few ways you can boost revenue by providing your subscribers with personal and relevant emails filled with valuable and timely content.

Go Beyond Email Blasts

Segment & Personalize
Sending email blasts – one universal email newsletter to all your subscribers – should be avoided. Try to analyze your email list with your unique content in mind and try to decide what groups of subscribers you have and what they want to buy and not what you want to sell them. Don’t dwell on the myriad of possibilities, even something basic – like male and female – is an excellent start to segmentation! The point here is to find aspects from which to differentiate and customize the emails you’re sending based on a subscriber’s personality and buying habits.

Say you have an online fabric store with fabric and quilting accessories. Your customers are quilters and fabric aficionados. Sure, you could ‘blast’ your entire list one newsletter with the same content. But if you want to increase, even double your sales from the email, more personalized offers should be your goal. Some of your customers are commercial quilters and buy more often so you can create a special promotion for them. Others are hobby quilters and perhaps buy only one piece of fabric and may forget about your store – you can stop this! – so offer some kind of quilting accessory using the knowledge from the fabric they purchased. The stronger the association, the higher the chances of turning them from a one-and-done shopper into a returning customer.

Track Results
The scenario above is but one ideal situation with email for ecommerce, but how do you achieve it? To begin with you must have the ability to see how your subscribers interact with your newsletter – do they open it, which link(s) do they click, and so on. Is the offer you’re promoting being utilized? All of this information is critical because it will help you build your future emails. Check to see where your recipients spend most of their time on your emails. Folks engaging but not buying? Improve the offer and resend to those who clicked, but didn’t purchase. Provide that extra incentive to close the sale.

Use Past Behavior
Leveraging past behavior of subscribers is an excellent way to encourage visits and purchases. If you have customers who’ve made purchases before, send them relevant follow-up information. For example, if you sold someone a bicycle part, they might like to see other parts for that model of bike.

Optimize Like a Boss

Great creative with the ways your ecommerce store can use – and profit from – email marketing. Determine what works best for your audience and products, split test, learn and optimize. Here are a few ideas to begin with:

Shipping Confirmations
Shipping confirmations should provide all details required to track arrival of the shipment. Why stop there? Recommend a product that pairs well with the one just purchased. This soft sell often results in extra sales. Step it up a notch by offering free shipping if they order this extra product that same day.

Abandoned Cart Emails
Adding a product to the cart is a visitor raising their hand to show they want to buy. When they leave without doing so, you must send them an email reminding them to come back to complete the sale. Make it fun by personifying your cart and use language like "your cart is lonely" or similar in sync with your branding. Up your game by incentivizing with free shipping, a discount, or more.

Marketing Automation
If your emails aren’t automated, you’re riding a bicycle on the marketing super highway. Every email mentioned above can and should be automated to the extent possible in order to maximize efficiency. Leveraging marketing automation makes this possible.
Idea – create a roadmap of a subscriber’s journey from first visit through repeat purchase to brand ambassador.

In Conclusion

Email marketing is just one channel by which ecommerce retailers can connect with customers and maximize profit in the process. Now that some great examples have been shared here it is time take your email marketing to the next level.

]]>2016-03-30T16:02:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/deschutes-brewery-website-review
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/deschutes-brewery-website-review#When:18:24:00ZWelcome to the first installment of the GRAYBOX local blog series, where we draw attention to local businesses and offer our expert advice/observations regarding their websites.

Deschutes Brewery / 210 NW 11th Ave

It is a place where the barstools are always warm, because they are always occupied (good luck snagging one for yourself). It is frequently regarded as the busiest and most visitor-friendly of the 61 breweries in Portland, owing primarily to its elite location along the streetcar line only a few puddle-jumps away from the heart of downtown. We love the cozy lodge decor, which radiates a vibe of rustic sophistication and reminds us of our own office. Oh, yeah, and the beer is pretty easy on the tastebuds too.

Deschutes wears its crown proudly, perhaps unaware that it simultaneously wears another crown to which its loyal legion of followers might be entirely unaware: Deschutes has the best website of any brewery in Portland.

What We Love

Elegant design: While it remains true that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, there are also features (in the web design world) that are considered universally beautiful. Deschutes is runway ready with its sleek and responsive design, dynamic imagery, and simple but streamlined color scheme. This is a website with visual strut.

Front & center: It’s all about the beer. Unlike countless other brewery websites, DeschutesBrewery.com peacocks its beers by proudly displaying them very prominently on the homepage. The visual impact encourages exploration, delivers knowledge, and undoubtedly plants the seed for future cravings.

Simple navigation: Understanding why people are visiting your website, then catering your design to meet those desires, is a pillar of exemplary web design. The Deschutes website clearly understands this principle and chooses to display only what is most sought after in the upper navigation - beer, more beer, and even more beer.

Concise text: The only creative writing that should exist on a homepage is writing that delivers value to a potential visitor. Too often webmasters fancy themselves dramatic poets and are overly verbose. Writing (particularly on the homepage) should be concise and to the point. When your visuals are beautiful, it behooves you to allow those visuals to speak for you, rather than clunkily ramrodding uninteresting sentences into every nook and cranny. Deschutes skillfully walks this tightrope.

SEO: Though its tactics are not mind-bogglingly advanced, Deschutes still stands head and shoulders above its local competitors in the ongoing joust that is SEO. The website very adequately covers the SEO 101 basics, and also stretches into more advanced tactics like clean navigation silos, friendly URLs, speedy page-load times, etc.

Social media: Social media efforts cannot officially be considered part of the website itself. However, Deschutes earns an ‘A’ in social media for its “Goldilocks” approach to posting in Facebook and Twitter (not too often, not too infrequently, just right), as well as for utilizing creative images and ideas in its posts.

We commend you, Deschutes Brewery, for being equally as adept at crafting a website as you are at crafting beer. See you at happy hour!

]]>2016-03-23T18:24:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/how-to-create-visual-identity-for-your-business
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/how-to-create-visual-identity-for-your-business#When:16:05:00ZCreating an effective visual identity for your business – from logo to letterhead to your online presence – is something that requires (and deserves) a tremendous amount of forethought. Color palettes, design elements, photo usage, fonts, graphics, and dozens of other visual elements all come into play, not just with the materials you have in place now, but in the future as media needs change and evolve. Today, opinions and decisions are made in split seconds, based almost solely on the visual components of the message.Your visual brand identity, and how it is presented to your customers, needs to be planned just as intentionally as your business goals. This ensures that the vision and your company’s voice are consistent no matter where it is represented.

The most important thing to remember is that every single element used – from color to font to image and design choice – is a mouthpiece, and all speak to the identity of your business.

Font, Colors, and Other Design Choices

Many people aren’t aware of the complex planning and dedicated work that goes into creating design elements like a logo, or picking out a color palette that fits your brand and its communications. Choices like color and font make a world of difference in how something is communicated (think of receiving a letter from the IRS printed in the “Comic Sans” font), and each component reflects directly on your company.

Involving professional designers for the process of creating logos and brand visuals is ideal; many companies that create visual materials “in-house” to save money end up sending the wrong messages based on sub-par logos or marketing materials. Even something as seemingly simple as color is a powerful communication tool (for good and for bad), and it requires knowledge and experience to be properly utilized. This link has some great examples of powerful and effective use of color:

When choosing imagery to bolster the marketing content you produce, whether it is for a print medium or online, you need to be equally as consistent and purposeful as your written content and overall messaging. According to research, “total views increased by 94 percent if a published article contained a relevant photograph or infographic when compared to articles without an image in the same category.” Needless to say, that is an incredible difference.

Consistency and a “Brand Book”

As technology changes, so does marketing. New media means new marketing opportunities, and businesses need to be ready to create materials for these opportunities.

In order to ensure that the visual brand tone and messages adhere to the visual plan you already have in place, you need to create a “brand book.” A brand book is a detailed set of guidelines on how all the aspects of your brand is handled, from how your logo may (or may not) be used, to letterhead, to email headers and footers, to websites. Many brand books are as detailed as specifying how far away the logo or design must be from any other visual elements. The more specific the brand book, the more you ensure that your visual business elements are in line and in tune with your company’s goals. Here are some basic tips for building a brand book for your business.

As with all worthwhile and effective processes, developing and implementing a strong visual brand representation for your business takes time, and it takes talent. The visual aspects of your company need to work just as hard – if not harder, in this age of instant decisions made in a single glance – as the rest of your business. There’s a world of knowledge and expertise waiting to be utilized for your benefit, and your company deserves to look its best.

]]>2016-03-14T16:05:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/tips-for-developing-marketing-plan
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/tips-for-developing-marketing-plan#When:20:52:00Z
A marketing plan helps solidify the objectives of a company by identifying a clear understanding of both your products and potential customers. A good marketing plan will also highlight the successful aspects of your business and products, but also shine a light on areas of weakness and opportunity that may need more attention.

A successful marketing plan will showcase a deep understanding of what your company offers, how they offer it (and where, to whom, etc.), and will demonstrate clear insight of your particular place in the market, as well as details about your customer base and why they make the decision that they do.

Positioning Statement –

A good place to start is with your company’s mission or product positioning statement. You need to be able to boil down both your business and its product offerings into simple, clear, direct statements that will serve as the overview and drive for all of your marketing efforts. A focused mission or positioning statement is the backbone of every solid marketing plan.

SWOT Analysis -

In order to know why your customer might choose your business, you have to have a crystal clear understanding of your product – and your competition. This can be done through a process called “Situational Analysis,” or “SWOT.” A SWOT analysis consists of an honest listing of the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats of your business and products.

Who? Where?

Once you deeply understand your product and place in the market, you will then be able to lay down plans to move forward in a realistic and effective way. Identifying your customer base and potential customer base is more than just identifying a demographic. You need to know what compels them to make their purchasing choices, where they shop, what product they currently buy, who influences them, what media they watch, and what their habits are. The more complete the customer profile, the better your chances of developing lasting customer relationships.

What Do You Say?

After you identify who your customer is and what their existing buying habits are, you must decide what it is to say to them. Each individual marketing project needs to have own focus, its own purpose, and its own plan. While each piece of marketing will help bolster the purpose of your overall marketing plan, each piece must also have its own clear focus and function.

How Do You Measure Success?

Know how you will measure success before you put projects into place. Each marketing project may have different calls to action, and each should be measured according to its own standards. Going into your marketing projects with a clear understanding of what needs to be accomplished and how that will be measured will guide you toward creating effective, on-target messaging.

A solid marketing plan is essential to any business’s growth and success. Marketing plans range from the simple to the very complex, but starting with these basics will set your company in the right direction for success.

]]>2016-03-03T20:52:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/google-axes-ads-into-oblivion
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/google-axes-ads-into-oblivion#When:20:59:00Z
The Google AdWords market, like the real estate market, is built almost entirely upon the foundation of location, location, location.

Google Ads Shakeup

Google is now displaying four ads at the top of the search results page instead of three. Notwithstanding other events, this news alone was the equivalent of a 9.0 earthquake in the eyes of seasoned AdWords advertisers. However, the shake-up was compounded further by the additional revelation that ads populating the righthand side of the screen have been axed into oblivion as well.

"Killing side ads was equivalent of a 9.0 earthquake in the eyes of seasoned AdWords advertisers."(CLICK TO TWEET)

For now, these changes only affect queries that are deemed “highly commercial.” However, it is an incredibly safe bet to assume that all queries will eventually join rank. How safe of a bet? Safer than a Lebron James dunk or a Game of Thrones plot twist.

Why Change Search Ads Now?

What is Google’s motivation behind these changes? The answer, as always, is that Google has identified a pathway for increasing revenue that can simultaneously (and somewhat reasonably) be spun under the crafty illusion of creating a better user experience.

Simply put - Google wants to make money and these changes are the subterfuge to enhance that effort. Here’s how:

The first piece is incredibly obvious. By displaying four ads at the top of the screen instead of three, Google significantly increases the odds that an ad will be clicked. As an added benefit, this maneuver also contributes to the ongoing slow death of SEO by marginalizing organic rankings and pushing them farther below the fold for highly competitive queries. Consequently more businesses may consider abandoning or de-emphasizing SEO as a viable strategy and refocus their efforts instead on paid search. More advertisers = more competition = higher bids = more money flowing into Google’s coffers.

Image courtesy of searchengineland.com

Perhaps less obviously, the elimination of ads from the right-hand column means there will be no more moral victories for advertisers who are outbid by their competitors. No longer can an advertiser argue that an average ad position of 6.3 is acceptable because the ad "is still displaying above the fold.” Not appearing in the top-4 is the equivalent of not existing. Therefore, advertisers who were previously bidding conservatively will be forced to abandon that approach and elevate their bids.

Not surprisingly, Google is spinning these changes as beneficial to its users. Cleaner pages, fewer total ads above the fold, etc., are the common arguments in its defense. In reality, though, that is merely the sugar that gets the medicine into our system.

Advertisers Must Adapt

What is the moral of this story? Like the house, Google always wins. Advertisers will now face increased competition in bidding, which inevitably will result in higher CPCs and consequently lower CPAs.

There is no sympathy in Google AdWords. Only adaption or death.

]]>2016-02-26T20:59:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/technical-writing-tips
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/technical-writing-tips#When:17:45:00Z
It’s not a secret to say that technical writing can be dry for both the writer and the reader. After all, it’s heavy on specs, data, and other seemingly impenetrable subject matters, making it difficult to feel excitement or a connection to the audience or topic. The copy can end up being dry and lifeless, more of a space holder than actually beneficial to your audience.

So what can you do when your subject matter, product, or service lives in the technical realm? How do you create buzz from decidedly un-buzzworthy topics? And more importantly, should you? Here are a few basic tips to keep in mind when creating effective content for technical subjects.

1) Know your audience.

Understanding your customers is the cornerstone of successful marketing. When you’re intimately aware of your customers’ needs, you will be able to create content that speaks to them effectively and efficiently, and in a way that is meaningful to them. Respect the fact that technical readers don’t want a “marketing campaign.” They want information and facts.

2) Stop trying to “make things sexy.”

Not everything needs to be “made sexy,” to use an overused advertising cliché. Technical audiences want technical information. Many businesses try so hard to dress up their technical writing that it wildly misses the audience that matters most: the technical professionals. This doesn’t mean that your technical content can’t be –or shouldn’t be – compelling, clear, and well written; it simply means that it’s important to keep the flash and sizzle to a minimum so that it doesn’t distract from the message and facts.

3) “Keep It Simple, Stupid”

A general rule in marketing copywriting is that the more words there are, the fewer of them will be read. Don’t take 10 words to say what can be said in 5. This proves to be even more important with technical content writing. By its nature it is not very exciting, so the temptation to “spice it up” is always there. But technical writing is not a place to show off prose or clever turns of phrase: it’s to convey explicit and exact information. Edit, cut, condense, and make sure every word has a clear and direct purpose. Be sure to “KISS,” or “keep it simple, stupid.”

4) Trust your product

When you fully believe in your product and services, that fact will be communicated in all of your content, from technical white papers to consumer-focused headlines. While fancy marketing bells and whistles do attract attention, they often attract attention away from the actual product. For a technical audience, nothing is more of a turn-off than feeling like the actual content and information you were hoping for is nothing more than puffery or meaningless buzzwords. Let your products and services do the talking in the technical realm, and don’t be ashamed to let them do so.

Technical writing isn’t glamorous. But that’s sort of the point. It’s not meant to create catch phrases or to produce water cooler talk about edgy marketing campaigns. Technical writing’s sole purpose is to convey direct information in a way that many other areas of marketing don’t: in a stripped down, content-focused, straightforward manner.

]]>2016-02-17T17:45:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/how-to-approach-writing-projects-when-youre-not-a-writer
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/how-to-approach-writing-projects-when-youre-not-a-writer#When:21:40:00Z
Writing can be a tricky endeavor. On the one hand, it seems simple enough – after all, we use words to communicate all day long. On the other hand, sitting down to write a paper, article, or piece of marketing presents its own set of hard-to-quantify issues for people who are not strong writers or who aren’t used to longer-form (longer than, say, an email) copywriting. Here are some tips that can help streamline and guide your business writing tasks.

Before You Begin Writing:

Research – Whether you’re writing for a technical audience or consumer audience, you have to start with research. Know your subject backwards and forwards. Know what information is going to be important to your audience, and compile an outline or bullet points that include all the information you want to convey. After your outline/list is compiled, take some time to review that.

Walk Away - After you have compiled and studied your research, walk away and do something unrelated to your writing project. Our brains like to percolate new information and chew on it in the background, which gives it time to form a plan. Walking away and giving your creative brain a chance to digest what you’ve researched may seem like it’s wasting time, but when you sit back down to write, the information will flow much more freely and easily, which in the long run will not just save you time, but make your copy stronger.

During Writing:

Set A Time To Write – Scheduling a time to write seems simple enough, but when your brain is faced with a task you’re not used to, or a task that may seem a bit amorphous, it likes to procrastinate. Scheduling a time to write gives your brain a set parameter to start focusing the information it has digested, and will force you to sit down, get it done, and avoid distractions.

Don’t Get Stuck On The First Sentence – Staring at a blank page is incredibly intimidating, even for seasoned writers. Getting that first sentence out is difficult, and you may find you spend the majority of your time getting over that first stumbling block. But don’t worry about that first sentence. Just write something – anything – to start your flow. A gigantic portion of writing is editing, and it’s often easier to go back and work on that opening sentence(s) once all the other pieces are in place.

Nothing Is Forever – To build off the last point, it’s important that you get your thoughts down on paper, even if they are just pieces and not completed, final copy. When you build a puzzle, you need to get all the pieces on the table, and then you move them around until your picture is complete. When you write, you can change the order of sentences and move them around until you get the picture you want – but that’s easier to do when you have all the pieces on the paper. Not everything has to come out in the correct order initially; that’s why we edit.

After Your Initial Draft

Edit. Edit. Edit. – Now that all your thoughts are down, it’s time to complete that puzzle. While editing may not be as “exciting” as writing, it’s the most important part. It’s time to edit, delete, edit, and delete. Make sure every word has a purpose. Jettison words. Get rid of weaker sentences. Delete anything that starts to wander away from your main points. Trim your copy down like you’re trimming the fat off a steak. It will hurt a bit to lose some of your words and thoughts, but in the long run, less is more.

Bring Someone Else In – Make sure yours aren’t the only set of eyes on your writing. Conversely, avoid the temptation to let more than a few people have input. Writing by committee is the least effective (and most excruciating) way to write, yet probably the biggest temptation within a company. “Too many cooks,” as the old saying goes. But it is still very important that you are not the only one reviewing and proofing your work – selective, strong guidance will always benefit your writing.

Using these basic tools will help you streamline the process of writing. And, like most skills, there is no substitute for practice. Following a simple method like the one above, and then augmenting it to fit your personality and situation will carve off much of the intimidation factor. Writing is a skill, and giving it context and a process will benefit both your writing ability and your time.

]]>2016-02-11T21:40:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/choosing-a-cms-drupal-8-vs-expressionengine-3
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/choosing-a-cms-drupal-8-vs-expressionengine-3#When:16:58:00Z
Content Management Systems (CMSs) are web software systems that make programming and building a website easy. While at first glance many CMSs seem similar, there are differences between them, and knowing which one is right for your project can be a bit overwhelming. In this post, we’ll explore a few of the major differences (and a few similarities) between two of the most popular and most robust CMSs, ExpressionEngine 3 (newest update released in Oct. 2015) and Drupal 8 (newest update released in Nov. 2015).

Drupal 8

Drupal 8 is a major rewrite of the code-base, and built on Symfony, a well-maintained PHP framework. Because it is much more “standards based” than ExpressionEngine 3, any PHP developer familiar with Symfony will have an easy learning curve. It is extremely well built, and used by very large websites that need speed and stability. It is free (open source), however it requires a tremendous amount of work to get live. Picture getting a huge pile of free wood in order to build a new house – the materials are all there, but you’re the one cutting, sawing, sizing, and piecing everything together on your own. In other words, in order to do anything, you must do everything. While powerful, it requires extensive development and configuration to perform.

ExpressionEngine 3

ExpressionEngine 3 is a significant update, but requires only minor updates for the add-ons to the take advantage of the new features. Although it technically has a license fee of $300, the cost of building an ExpressionEngine site is generally lower, as it doesn’t require as much work to get the site up and running. ExpressionEngine still has the backbone to withstand huge amounts of traffic and a solid architecture that is very developer friendly. It has the simplicity for rapid site building and the flexibility for extensive custom system development. Both BarackObama.com and DonaldJTrump.com, for example, are built with ExpressionEngine and have performed perfectly under the pressures of huge traffic levels.

Differences

The ExpressionEngine developers have decoupled much of its code base from its foundational framework “CodeIgniter.” By doing so, it is growing up and using more efficient framework – less “straight-forward” PHP. EE3 is much easier to get going on smaller projects, but can be easily scaled to architect much more complex features, and as a general rule EE developers are going to be cheaper than Drupal developers.

Think of the difference between ExpressionEngine 3 and Drupal 8 as the difference between an 18-wheeler and a utility pick-up truck. The pick-up truck is usually the easiest and most useful for the vast majority of people, but the 18-wheeler is designed to be used for enterprise work and would be overkill for most. And while the cost of building a Drupal site is generally more expensive, the Drupal site can we architected to handle more complex business logic and functionality.

ExpressionEngine

Drupal

Usage

Powerful all-purpose framework for rapid development of custom web-apps.

Heavy-lifting system requiring extensive development to get to the minimum functionality. To leverage more advanced features, costly and lengthy development is required.

Base Cost

$300 one time (per domain)

Free

Cost of Modules and Add-ons

Varies, about a third are free, others are reasonably priced

Free

Language

PHP

PHP

Database

MySQL

MySQL or PostgreSQL

Maintainer

EllisLab (small team of about 20 staff)

Community driven: 3200 contributors

Difficulty

Admin friendly, developer friendly. Most features available out of the box, or with a simple module.

Highly technical, requires extensive PHP knowledge

Custom Fields

Native

Added to core in D7 (also known as the content construction kit CCK)

Scalable

Challenging to scale to ultra-high traffic sites without extensive DevOps expertise. No support for database clusters.

Built for scale out of the box. Supports clusters and multi-server environments natively.

More specifically, ad copy that promotes ongoing and upcoming sales has withstood thousands of a/b tests over time and is proven to engage customers and attract clicks.

Can these types of ads be improved even further? The answer is yes.

There is a relatively unknown tool that helps to amplify the success of these ads even further, yet I very rarely see advertisers utilizing it.

I am referring to the “countdown” function available in AdWords, which allows advertisers to dynamically display a custom countdown within ads.

The end result looks something like this:

These custom-built countdowns automatically update once daily, thereby (presumably) creating urgency behind the upcoming end date of a sale or another significant event.

How does an advertiser create these ads? The process has been simplified and is actually quite easy.

1) Enter a "curly bracket" into either line of the ad copy. Several options will immediately be presented to you. Select the "countdown" option.

2) Enter the details of your countdown. This includes the start date and the end date of the event to which you are counting down. AdWords also requires that you enter a specific time as well. Hint: assuming that your event concludes at midnight, you would most likely enter 23:59:59. Lastly, select how many days in advance of the event you would like the countdown to begin. The ultimate goal here is urgency, so starting your countdown more than 10+ days in advance is not likely to have the desired effect.

3) Complete the process by adding "normal" ad copy around the countdown timer.

Shockingly easy, right? Surprisingly this tool remains somewhat obscure to the “average” user of AdWords, even though this tool will immediately improve the overall performance of your sales campaigns and consequently assist with generating more conversions.

We encourage you to experiment and create your first countdown ad today - then tell us about the results!

]]>2016-01-18T16:57:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/using-tone-in-advertising
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/using-tone-in-advertising#When:17:13:00Z
Marketing and advertising are conversations that a company has with its audience. This conversation can take many forms and have many different end goals, but it all boils down to your business talking to your customers (and potential customers). And each company, just like each person, is a different entity, so honing in on who your company is and how it speaks to its marketing audience is a crucial aspect in creating effective, meaningful, and impactful marketing.

The tone, or “voice,” of your advertising is, to paraphrase many of our parents, not what you say, but how you say it. It is distilling your company’s vision and values into a set “personality” – whether that personality be a serious voice of authority and professionalism for a law firm, or a whimsical and fun tone for a toy shop. The tone of your marketing materials needs to match your company’s central mission, but it also needs to be employed cohesively across the board into all of your marketing materials, no matter what department or committee it originates from. Additionally, it has to speak directly and effectively to the needs of your specific audience; it needs to be said in a way that resonates and compels.

Finding the right tone of your business is critical. It will tell your audience everything they need to know about your company – who you are, how you conduct your business, how you view your customers, and more. Take Denny’s, the iconic American diner, for example. The somewhat nonsensical, rambling posts at @DennysDiner lack most semblances of capitalization, grammar, or punctuation, but it speaks directly and perfectly to their core audience of “munchy” midnight patrons.

how many of you have friends who are low key weird with the ranch dressing just like...wild with that ranch

The tone of their marketing is different than, say, @Applebees, whose posts generally contain coupon deals or customer’s retweeted pictures, and are intended for a suburban family audience. The tone tells you everything about their business and their intended target customers.

So how do you find your company’s tone? A simple way is to compile a list of “character traits” your business would have if it were a person. Is it an older, reliable person? Young and hip? Casual? Unshakably professional? What does he or she sound like? How would they talk or interact to your customers? Creating a persona for your business can not only help you nail down the tone for your marketing, but it will also be a indispensable in- company tool across departments so that the voice and tone remains on-target and consistent.

Determining and implementing the tone and voice of your marketing is key. It will define who your business is to people who may have no other knowledge or interaction with it. It tells them who you are, and how you can directly impact them. It’s choosing words, phrases, information, and graphics that are clear and impactful – and most importantly consistent to your business’s mission and goals.

]]>2016-01-05T17:13:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/why-use-marketing-automation
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/why-use-marketing-automation#When:21:05:00Z
Most people have heard of
marketing automation, but sifting between myth and truth is another thing altogether. Part of the issue is the name; it is not as easy to say as paid search, it is not as ubiquitous as SEO, and the ‘automation’ turns some people off immediately.

So what is it? First, let’s talk about what it is not – email marketing. Many people, even marketers, frequently use ‘marketing automation’ interchangeably with ‘email marketing’. This is not accurate. Email is but one component of marketing automation, but they are absolutely not the same thing. Let’s break it down further by first looking at the two words.

Marketing - the essential component of a company’s relationship with people or brands before they become customers (or leads). For some companies, especially the ones that have larger potential customer base, the possibility of maintaining constant interaction with each and every person is quite overwhelming.

Automation - the use of tools within a system to send personalized, targeted messages across multiple channels in an efficient and scalable fashion.

Now we can define marketing automation as ‘an interconnected system of people, software, strategy, and tactics to replace manual, repetitive or inefficient marketing tasks & processes, the goal of which is to interact with prospects in a personalized, scalable, and profitable manner.'

Based on our exploration of the two words it is easy to see that marketing automation is a comprehensive solution. As such, it can and should be utilized to achieve the following for your business:

Message Tailoring: target prospects based on the actions they’ve performed on your website. Knowing how they browse your site tells you what they are interested in. Use this to your advantage.

Customer Segmentation: group, or segment prospective customers by their interests, behavior, and sometimes, even demographics. Your prospects should receive messages that are relevant to their needs, not yours!

Communication Consistency: uniform, optimized, on-brand delivery of any marketing messages or communication across all channels and touch points. Your company's brand and voice should be reflected everywhere.

Actionable Insight: detailed reporting on each campaign or channel to allow for for easily digestible data, statistics, or graphs to further improve future marketing efforts. Optimize all the things.

"Your prospects should receive messages that are relevant to their needs, not yours!"(CLICK TO TWEET)

It should be pointed out just how hard it would be to generate and maintain a truly effective marketing campaign for a high volume of contacts. With the ability to automate your programs, you plan out the logic once. Then the system can manage most of it on its own. These kinds of tailored programs are critical to nurturing your contact relationships proactively (not reactively), while retaining control over the flow of information.

Why Is Marketing Automation Better?

Marketing automation is
very distinct from the auto responder tools that many businesses typically use. When used properly, marketing automation can all but guarantee that prospective customers receive narrowly targeted, highly relevant, marketing messages at exactly the correct time.

This ability for targeted messaging is radically different from traditional email marketing blasts. Basic email delivery services frequently are only able to send non-targeted email “blasts” to a large group of recipients in a one-to-many fashion. Frequently, this un-targeted approach is viewed, albeit sometimes incorrectly, as spam.

In direct contrast to plain email marketing blasts, marketing automation leverages behavioral-based targeting and communication. Using marketing automation, a company can automatically send a new prospect just starting their online research some high-level information that is relevant to their exact topic. Conversely, if (or when) a prospective customer is ready to buy, they can be sent purchase-related messages. At the same time, the marketing automation platform could be configured to send a notification to sales or account staff, and recommend contacting the lead. Leads looking at one product on the website can be sent information about that specific product, without a salesperson having to ask the lead anything.

As you can see an automated program that schedules targeted and personalized messages to specific customers, rather than a one-size-fits-all campaign, will generate higher conversions and more revenue.

Garbage In, Garbage Out

A word of caution…the value and success of any marketing automation implementation is relative to your business’ needs. In most cases, this would be heavily influenced by how well your
content marketing initiatives are performing. Thus, if your content marketing isn’t working, then marketing automation will not provide the desired fix.

Otherwise the outcome of a successful implementation will result in an increased operational efficiency and reaction to prospects’ behavior and communication when they are ready, increases in revenue, and predictable activities and accurate sales forecasting.

Go forth and automate~!

]]>2015-12-29T21:05:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/search-engine-trends-2016-google-trends
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/search-engine-trends-2016-google-trends#When:17:09:00ZAdvancements within Google and other search engines are equally as inevitable as the advancement of our calendars.

Therefore, with 2016 fast approaching, let’s dive headfirst into the most important search engines trends of the upcoming new year and consider how those trends will contribute to the evolution of the SEO industry.

1) More Answers Directly Within the Results

What started as a snowball rolling downhill in 2015 will turn into an avalanche in 2016.

Doing so eliminates three entire steps from the knowledge-seeking process: 1) Scanning the results and deciding which website to click. 2) Actually clicking on a website and waiting for it to load. 3) Orienting yourself to the website after it loads and subsequently scanning for the information you desire.

Historically those three steps have been so fundamentally ingrained into the mindset of utilizing a search engine that they seem like an insignificant burden.

However, in the efficiency-focused eyes of Google, every step is a burden regardless of how deeply its roots are planted in the process.

A perfect example are popular weather-related queries. Google has almost single-handedly slayed the weather giants Weather.com, Accuweather, and other once-formidable weather heavyweights simply by displaying upcoming forecasts directly in the search engine results page.

For example, a search for “Portland weather” yields the following result:

Google has immediately answered my question, thereby preventing me from engaging in the cumbersome process of clicking on a website (or various websites) to locate the same information.

Easy. Fast. Relevant.

The real challenge is attempting to understand more complex queries, which has become Google’s central theme and predominant goal of 2016.

For example, Google also understands the slightly more complex query “what year was Portland founded?” and once again answers my question directly within the SERP.

As the queries become more complex, the conciseness of Google’s answers also become slightly more convoluted, as evidenced by the deeper search “how many breweries are in Portland?”

In this case, Google is displaying an entire paragraph of information from a website that it deems an authority on the subject. However, unlike the previous examples, the specific answer that I desire is not “front and center”. Instead it is sandwiched between sentences containing irrelevant information. This suggests that Google is either a) failing to understand the very specific nature of my query, or b) failing to pull only the information that I desire into the SERP.

In 2016, Google will parse through that information with even more laser-like efficiency. It is both reasonable and likely in 2016 to expect this same query (and others of similar complexity) to include only the desired information, as seen with the my other two queries.

2) RankBrain

Google has confirmed publicly that it recently launched an entirely new artificial intelligence system called “RankBrain” to assist with the process of determining rankings. RankBrain does not replace the Hummingbird algorithm that launched in August 2013, but rather exists as an addendum within it to help process highly advanced and highly ambiguous queries.

In a stunning moment of transparency, Google senior research scientist Greg Corrado
admitted in a October 2015 Bloomberg article that RankBrain is now the third most important ranking signal (out of hundreds) that determines a website’s position on a SERP. It is a safe to assume that PageRank, ever-evolving system that evaluates the volume and the quality of links pointing to your website, is also a top-3 factor. The other mysterious “third signal” remains a mystery.

What does the now vitally important RankBrain engine actually do? The answer, of course, is muddled.

"What does the now vitally important RankBrain engine actually do? The answer, of course, is muddled."(CLICK TO TWEET)

RankBrain is a self-teaching artificial intelligence system that converts language into mathematical entities. Consequently when RankBrain encounters a word or a long-tail phrase that it fails to recognize, its self-teaching system makes an educated guess as to what words and phrases have similar meanings based on its formulas, then ranks websites accordingly.

Approximately 15% of queries entered into Google are highly complex and/or never-seen-before by Google, according to Carrado, and the RankBrain system was launched with the goal of answering those more highly complex queries. However, rankings for “simplistic” searches are being affected as well.

It is safe to assume the RankBrain system will evolve significantly over time, much like the PageRank system has evolved since 1998. However, because RankBrain launched less than 100 days ago, its evolutionary curve is likely to be sharp in the coming months. In 2016 I expect Google to make significant adjustments to RankBrain as its strengths and flaws are identified and then reinforced via hard data, therefore contributing to a further shifting of the ranking landscape.

Of course, there are countless other “less significant” trends that will affect Google and other search engines in 2016, which I will cover in my next blog. However, for the sake of conciseness, it is a fair summary to state that “informational SERPs” and RankBrain will dominate the SEO landscape in 2016.

Stay tuned to GRAYBOX in 2016 to follow all of the latest search engine trends!

]]>2015-12-22T17:09:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/tips-for-successful-content-marketing
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/tips-for-successful-content-marketing#When:19:22:00Z"Content marketing" is one of the most commonly bandied about buzzwords of the digital marketing industry in the 2010s.

However, there is a frequent misconception regarding the process as well as what proper content marketing actually entails. Too often businesses rely on intermittently publishing the occasional blog or sporadically engaging on social media. The results, unsurprisingly, fail to generate any tangibly positive results. The resulting frustration usually causes reduced effort, which only serves to further feed the cycle of failure.

Don’t be like those businesses.

"Too often businesses publish the occasional blog or sporadically engage on social media. Don't be like them."(CLICK TO TWEET)

So, what does good content marketing actually look like?

Be Unique

Very simply, the primary objective is to transform all of your content into something that is unique and therefore memorable. In a heartless world where attention spans are minimal and competition is fierce, one must deliver all content with an eye toward standing apart from the crowd. Write with voice. Write with sass. Write with anything that avoids slumping into a tone of monotony.

Be Consistent

The goal behind crafting your uniqueness is to attract views that result in links and shares, which consequently will attract new viewers and simultaneously improve your SEO. Every link or share that is generated could also potentially result in yet another link or share, thereby producing a cascading snowball effect of new visits. Extreme examples of this effect are evident on YouTube, where amateur videos can “go viral” and transform average citizens into internet celebrities overnight.

Unfortunately, the above scenario is not likely for most businesses, especially when the topics pertinent to their industry are inherently dry. However, that segues into the next point about content marketing that is frequently forgotten: it must be a long-term and consistent effort. Many of your blogs will never gain any traction whatsoever and will fail to rank in Google. However, with content marketing there is always strength in volume. Writing ten interesting blog posts significantly increases the odds of your discovery over writing one interesting post. It is often as simple as a straight "numbers game", and those with the bullheaded determination to continue churning out content are much more likely to be declared the victor.

Be Visual

Lastly, one enormously overlooked piece of content marketing is its visual aspect. Even the most utterly fascinating arrangements of words and sentences still require visual aids, preferably equally as fascinating. Videos,
compelling images, and illustrations are your friend. Use them! Visual aids also provide additional SEO opportunities, which further assist with elevating your rankings when optimized properly.

Obviously, most of these tasks fall into the category of “easier said than done.” But there’s no crying in content marketing, and nobody promised you that domination of the internet would materialize with ease. Strive forth with confidence, and remember to engage uniquely, frequently, and visually to achieve success.

]]>2015-12-14T19:22:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/copywriting-techniques
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/copywriting-techniques#When:18:21:00Z
Creating informative, compelling, and
valuable copy for your marketing materials isn’t simply a matter of knowing your own product and being able to write grammatically correct sentences. It takes knowing the exact needs of your customer base, as well as how to quickly and effectively communicate your message in a way that solidly resonates with them.

However, many times businesses are so close to their own products and industry that it becomes difficult to decipher which information is important, relevant, or understandable to your audience. There are several key questions to ask at the beginning of the copywriting process to hone in on the right message, tone, and delivery for your
marketing messages. Here are a few basic examples.

1 - Who is my exact audience?

It sounds very basic, but many times businesses have not defined their specific marketing audience. “Everyone,” or “Men,” or “Business owners” are much too broad of a definition to create any sort of compelling message that leads to action. Be specific. One good idea is to create a proxy profile of the perfect customer, hang that customer profile up, and then write directly to that person. The content and messages you create should be specifically for that customer profile; anything that falls outside that target area – even if it is information you might think is useful – should tell you that your message is not targeted correctly or precisely enough. Your marketing copy should be focused and clear, not general and all encompassing.

"It sounds very basic, but many times businesses have not defined their specific marketing audience."(CLICK TO TWEET)

2 - What message do I want to tell my audience?

Now that you have your ideal customer profile, you need to decide what to tell them. It is decidedly difficult to whittle down everything you want to say about your business, but it’s important that each marketing campaign has a singular idea – a focal point of a message that will resonate. Then stick to that one point.

3 – Cut. Then cut again.

Brevity isn’t just the soul of wit, as the saying goes. It’s the key to effective marketing communication. Keep headlines to a minimum amount of words. Body copy should be short and efficient. Don’t be robotic about what you say, but chose direct and impactful words. Edit, then edit again. Ask, “What is the
one thing I want my customer to take away?” Remember: as the amount of text goes up, the chances anyone will read it will go down.

"Remember: as the amount of text goes up, the chances anyone will read it will go down."(CLICK TO TWEET)

4 – Run it past someone, but avoid committee.

You shouldn’t create your marketing copy in a vacuum, but writing by committee is the fastest way to denude your materials of any and all efficacy. Soliciting input from outside sources can and will be helpful, but it’s important to draw a distinction between someone who has an opinion and someone who has a say in the final product. Having a clearly defined set of eyes on the marketing copy will not only streamline the process, but keep your message direct and clear, based on the research you have already done.

5 – Hire a professional.

Great copywriting can be so good that it looks like anyone can do it. Headlines are usually only 5-7 words after all, and that website only had a paragraph – how hard can that be? But great copywriting, just like any other industry specialty, is a skill. More often than not, companies that write their own web or marketing copy end up spending more time and money to get results that are far below what a professional could have offered in the first place. It would be a tragedy for a campaign to fail because everything was professional except the writing.

Effective copy is the backbone of any marketing campaign or website. It works in concert with other elements like programming and graphic design to create a complete package that effectively delivers the message necessary to increase your business.

]]>2015-12-10T18:21:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/web-design-fundamentals-basic-web-design-principles
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/web-design-fundamentals-basic-web-design-principles#When:14:54:00Z
In my daily web-browsing ventures I frequently stumble across websites that really shine. But what makes a website truly stand apart from the rest? Is it their awesome
usability factor? Their color scheme? Their simplicity? In this post we’ll explore the most important web design principles to remember so you can make a website visually engaging, effective, easy to use, and memorable.

PURPOSE / OBJECTIVE

Before touching any web-building application, you first need to clearly define your website’s main purpose or objective. This sounds obvious, however, designers at times tend to skip or ignore this step and make assumptions about what the client is seeking. This ends up with the client expecting A-B-C, while the designer delivers X-Y-Z, leaving both parties unsatisfied and frustrated with the end result.

The user experience for each of these theoretical websites would be drastically different. Therefore the best web designers are carefully tuned to the needs of their users and have a firm grasp of each website’s purpose, the type of content that should live on each page, and how each page should interact and relate to the rest of the website.

"The best web designers are tuned to needs of the user and have a firm grasp of website purpose"(CLICK TO TWEET)

PRIORITY

A great way to determine the importance of what elements are found on a specific page is to simply rank them. Determine their rank based on how closely aligned elements are to the main purpose or objective of the website.

Take, for example, the Nordstrom website:

The first thing that you are introduced to is a promo for clearance items from designer names. It is using a very aggressive action color (red) to capture your attention.

As your eye wanders down the page, a second promo for recommendations is shown.

Before scrolling for more content, the eyes circle back up to see the Nordstrom logo, as well as another small ad-strip for shopping gift cards. Then you see the navigation elements before returning to the main designer clearance ad.

If the website being designed is information-heavy, it is beneficial to present the information in such a way that the user will be able to find information quickly, read through the content easily, then process it. Use simple web fonts that read well when used in long passages.

If the website is more image-based, make sure the imagery being utilized is of high quality (no 20x20px photos blown up 5x its size, please). Check to ensure it renders well on slower internet connections (no 15mb JPGs for backgrounds!) and is well-organized so users can quickly and easily browse the site without experiencing loading-time hindrances.

GESTALT PRINCIPLES

Covered at length in a
previous post, the gestalt principles help immensely when designing a website.

Simply put, “gestalt” is a German term most commonly used in psychology that means “unified whole.” You may have heard of the phrase, “the whole is more than the sum of its parts”. Essentially people tend to view websites as one whole entity before seeing the individual elements (such as the logo, navigation, main CTA, body content, footer, etc.) that comprise the entire interface.

CLARITY / WHITESPACE / SIMPLICITY

Clarity, whitespace, and simplicity directly relate to one another. In order to achieve clarity, the UI should be simple, easy to use, and uncluttered, employing many different facets of whitespace to give importance to or take attention away from elements.

Clarity - Clarity among elements on a page means that every piece should have a clear purpose for its presence on the page as well as its positioning. Clarity can also refer to the literal sharpness of an object. To combat sharpness issues always make sure there are no “partial pixels” present on any element and that all pieces align with the pixel grid, otherwise the design of a page can seem out of focus and unrefined.

Whitespace - Whitespace can mean many things. It could mean, very obviously, the “white” space surrounding any element. The spacing between elements does not have to be literal white, but alludes more to the negative space surrounding the elements. The amount of negative space employed can give a very different feel from website to website. Many fashion, architecture, or other high-end websites utilize a lot of whitespace to give an air of elegance and luxury, while some websites, like this one, utilize very little white space on their website, leaving the user overstimulated and flustered by all of the UI bells and whistles during their experience.Whitespace could also refer to the line-spacing between lines of text. Increasing line-spacing, especially with fonts encompassing a larger x-height than usual, aids in readability of long passages of text. Be careful not to have too much line-spacing with text though, as the likelihood of connecting the user’s eye from one line to another decreases when line-spacing increases dramatically.
Whitespace can also be found in the margins and padding of elements. Margins and padding are spaces between elements and text in the realm of HTML / CSS. As a general rule, text and images shouldn’t overlap, unless there is a specific purpose or intent behind the reasoning of doing so. Each element can utilize either margins or padding to increase / decrease the space between itself and other elements.

Simplicity - It has been proven that simple website designs are preferred by users. Unless your website is specifically geared toward tantalizing people with a mind-blowing design, most of the time your users are simply looking for information. Sometimes complex designs can interfere. To alleviate the frustration, follow the K-I-S-S rule and keep your website simple, direct, and easy-to-use. A good user experience is beautiful, but a great user experience is both beautiful while also staying out of the user’s way during their journey.

RESPONSIVE WEB DESIGN

You may have heard about responsive design, because the thinking has been around for a while now. Responsive web design (RWD) is a technique utilized in web design that aims to provide to site viewers the best viewing experience possible across a wide range of devices. When building responsive websites, the site is built using a proportion-based grid, flexible-sized images, and media queries via CSS.

In today’s world you should generally plan on building a website responsively. The number of mobile users viewing websites on their devices will only increase over time, so make sure your website is running on a platform which gives the optimal experience for any user on any screen-size. Otherwise, you could leave a very wrong impression with visitors who struggle to view your content on their phones, so much so that they may never return for a follow-up visit!

NAVIGATION

Have you ever tried finding a specific destination without any directions whatsoever on how to arrive there? The likelihood of reaching your destination was probably close to zero. This is what users face when they stumble upon a new website. To alleviate their struggle, it is key to employ a clear, simple, and easy-to-use navigation.

Take Google, for example:

There are no extra bells and whistles on their search page, unlike other search engines like Bing or Yahoo. The main purpose for using Google is to find information. To do this, the essentials that are needed are simply a search field, a search button, and for self-promo purposes, a logo. The barely-there navigation that exists on the upper-right hand corner of the page allows Google users access to everything tied to their google account, in a neat and simple package, without hindering the user experience. As stated before, a great user experience (such as Google’s) is both beautiful, and also stays out of the user’s way during their journey.

USABILITY

The most beautiful website in the world is worth nothing if it isn’t usable. As websites these days become more interactive, it’s the designer’s job to make absolutely sure the website functions well and is easy to use. Always be sure to look out for usability issues such as:

Unexpected placement for very obvious things. For example, we typically find search bars somewhere at the top of the page (either top right, or, if called out more, top-center). If we place the search bar at the bottom of the page, it will take a while for users to find it. In cases like this the conventional placement of useful UI elements is the best route to take. Humans are creatures of habit - if you place elements in areas where they aren’t usually found on other websites, you will inevitably confuse your users.

Launching a website without any form of user testing. You won’t know for certain any user behavior patterns on the website until you get it in the hands of users. Maybe the CTA you thought would get 100% visibility and 80% clickability performed poorly in actual testing. Maybe the one subtle element on the page actually gets clicked 4x as much as you anticipated. Either way, you don’t know what you don’t know, and you won’t know until you test!

The best and most cost-efficient way to test for usability issues is with prototypes. The prototypes don’t even have to be coded up - they can simply be design mockups that link each page to another. Invision is a great prototyping tool that transforms static screens into clickable, interactive prototypes.

CONCLUSION

First and foremost, before any design work is started, you must know the website’s main purpose, objective, and its end-users. By applying the design principles mentioned above, you’re already a step ahead of thousands of other websites today.

]]>2015-12-08T14:54:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/expressionengine-3-updates-features-ee3
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/expressionengine-3-updates-features-ee3#When:17:40:00Z
Last month, a couple of us from GRAYBOX took a flight down to San Antonio to attend the 2015 ExpressionEngine Conference. Without a major version release since late 2009, I was excited to get my hands on the latest and greatest iteration of EE. The new version contains a few major updates, but generally sticks to the core and cleans up several areas that have been neglected for far too long.

Removed wiki module (although there's a note that they are open sourcing the module after compatibility checks are complete)

Many minor adjustments to defaults, sample data, installers, programatic events and other settings to make the system cleaner and easier to use

I generally have two complaints about ExpressionEngine, the pricing and the control panel - and this update makes large strides in area of the control panel.

Refreshed Control Panel

Although they chose not to use a common framework such as Bootstrap, Foundation or Skeleton, their home-rolled framework is similar to many of the frameworks on the web these days - responsive, grid-based and consistent. The mantra by the Ellis Lab team during the demo was "consistency consistency consistency." Buttons that look similar should do similar actions...don't make the user think. Ellis Lab built out the refreshed control panel, and it's nice.

As you can see, the control panel is cleaned up and organized a bit better. No crazy new features or anything, just some general housekeeping by putting the action items on the left, the config on the right, and refreshed the blocks of content with some actionable pieces of information. The control panel is now fully responsive, so using your mobile device to make an update won't be as annoying.

File Structure Updates

Upgrading ExpressionEngine has been a bit of a hassle. Some fundamental file structure updates have separated out the core EE code from the third-party code and updates promise to be a simple drag-and-drop replacement of the core code. In practice, this went very smooth (I upgraded from 3.0.0 to 3.0.4 with no issues).

All ExpressionEngine Core files are kept isolated from the user folders. The user folders contain the templates, third-party add-ons, and all custom configuration. When you need to update ExpressionEngine, simply drop in the themes/ee and system/ee and boot it back up. The system automatically loads the installer, click "install" and you're good to go. Even the installer directory is cleaned up automatically in EE3.

"ExpressionEngine includes a Spam Module that allows you to block spammy channel comments, forum posts, and member registrations. The Spam Module includes a library that exposes spam classification to third party developers. The Spam Module allows you to mark content flagged as spam as false positive which it then learns from, allowing the Spam Module to be tailored to your content."

The spam module comes with a database of ham and spam values, and is configurable to work with your content because spam on one site is not the same as spam on another. The module learns based on your content and what you flag as good or bad. Function hooks are available to use in custom add-ons, as well as native functionality for Channels, Comments and Member modules.

"ExpressionEngine has a complex set of data types, such as Channels, Members, Templates, and Categories. These have properties and constraints, as well as relationships and complex storage requirements. The model service helps smooth out interacting with ExpressionEngine’s data types by providing an API that mimics their natural language description as closely as is feasible. You do not query for channel_data joined on channel_titles; instead, you simply get a channel entry with its fields."

Models help to structure and give consistent access to data objects. Additionally, new models can be framed up quickly - although there is not a data builder like some other frameworks, you have to create your tables and fields, then map everything to the model in your add-on. This has huge potential for building out complex data types for web applications.

Unlike developer hooks, the Event Service is a broadcast of an event during the functional operation of an add-on, but closer to the code level without the need for an installation of a developer hook record in exp_extensions, or with the overhead of the extension settings. Simple broadcasts of events such as subscriber addition or page publication will trigger the event and send the applicable information to the listener.

Bottom Line

The update to ExpressionEngine is solid, and keeps the core functionality in tact, while upgrading many of the lagging features that had needed some attention over the years. This keeps development moving rapidly ahead without a steep learning curve, and provides many new features to make the client's life happier.

]]>2015-12-02T17:40:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/increase-adwords-conversions-without-spending-more-money
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/increase-adwords-conversions-without-spending-more-money#When:17:35:00ZStripped to its bare essentials, the core principal of AdWords is actually quite simple: we spend money in AdWords because we want to increase a specific action (or actions) on our website.

Simple, right?

Despite the seemingly inherent simplicity behind this statement, I frequently see marketing companies and other businesses judging the progress and “success” of their paid search efforts through the lens of other misleading KPIs such as click through rate, impression share, total clicks, etc., when in reality those merely serve as distraction from the primary goal.

I prefer to avoid distractions.

While different types of conversions vary from website to website, there are three universal strategies that can be implemented within AdWords itself (i.e., these have nothing to do with landing pages) to guarantee an increase conversions and conversion rates without elevating your total budget.

1) Reducing Bids

This is easily the most effective strategy for producing immediate conversion increases. However, this strategy ONLY works if you are exhausting the daily budget of a campaign. For emphasis purposes, I feel obligated to repeat the previous statement - this strategy only works (insert a million exclamation points here) if you are exhausting the daily budget within a particular campaign. Let’s examine why.

Let’s say your daily budget within a campaign is $100, and every day by 3:00 pm it runs out of money. By strategically reducing bids on every keyword within that campaign, each click will consequently cost less, and therefore you will produce more clicks every day for the same $100. More clicks every day for the same amount of money will naturally equate to more conversions. This is a highly nuanced and frequently misunderstood strategy, particularly since click through rates naturally decline when bids are reduced. However, click through rate is easily the most overrated of all KPIs in AdWords, and it is undeniably wiser to increase total traffic and total conversions (without spending more money) at the expense of CTR. I have written more about this particular strategy in exhaustive detail in a previous blog, for those of you seeking additional information.

2) Negative keywords

Checking your keyword query reports should be a routine occurrence. The keyword query reports tell you exactly what queries (searches) have triggered prior clicks, and should assist with the growth of your negative keyword list quite substantially.

By analyzing which queries are actually generating clicks you can very easily stamp out any unrelated or undesirable searches from ever wasting your money again. By eliminating waste, you consequently guarantee that more and more of your clicks are relevant, which therefore increases conversions without increasing your budget.

3) Manipulating bids/budgets

This strategy is slightly more simplistic. At the highest level, it usually behooves marketers to spend more money in campaigns and ad groups that produce more conversions. Shifting budget away from poor performing campaigns is a very quick and very simplistic solution, and can be done with a minimal amount of deep understanding.

However, because budgets cannot be altered at the ad group level, one should dive deeper and look at individual keyword performance within each ad group. Some keywords will naturally perform better than others, and tightening bids on keywords that perform poorly should have the dual impact of reducing wasteful spending while also allowing keywords that perform better to spend more, all without requiring you to elevate your daily or monthly total budgets.

I hope this blog has provided you with hope that increasing AdWords without spending more total money is a totally feasible goal through strategic optimization. For more detailed guidance, please contact GRAYBOX for a free consultation!

]]>2015-10-30T17:35:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/why-writing-matters
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/why-writing-matters#When:22:09:00Z
When putting together a solid marketing plan and website, there is one crucial element that often gets overlooked: writing. “After all,” the thinking goes, “we know our company, and we write plenty of other things like emails and proposals. Why would marketing copywriting be any different? We’ll save money by doing it ourselves.”

Writing Is Hard

But marketing copywriting, much like programming, is very much its own skill and language. Words matter more when crafting persuasive copy that speaks to potential customers. Skimping on solid, powerful writing for your website is much like having a beautifully constructed new home where the new homeowner has decided to paint the exterior himself with whatever random brushes or rollers he happens to have laying around. Sure, the home is a custom-built wonder – but nobody wants to check it out because the amateur paint job makes the entire property look like a joke. Good writing, much like design, invites people in; it welcomes and entices. Poor writing tells your potential customers that you don’t care, can’t be bothered with doing things right, and that what your company has to offer isn’t worth checking out. Good writing gives your customers something to grab on to. It helps direct them, inform them, and compel them into action. It tells your story, conveys your passions, and announces your expertise. It should be clear, concise, and powerful.

Bad writing, on the other hand, confuses, irritates, and annoys. It is a clear dividing line between “professional” and “two-bit operation.” It tells people that “good enough, I guess” is your business’s mission statement.

Writing Expertise Is King

Ironically, when businesses choose to keep the writing “in-house” to save time and money, it rarely ends up doing either. Since it’s not anyone’s priority or expertise, the work gets passed around various departments for input, and everyone uses their own brush and paint, creating an ineffective mishmash of styles, tones, and focus. Time (and money) is then spent on rewrites, more department input, and the end result is often a very visible “written (poorly) by committee.”

Plan For Success

Effective copy can more than pay for itself as part of your marketing goals and vision. Writers know how to deliver your message to your audience in a way that is concise, convincing, and powerful. They can convey your passion and expertise in a way that is perfectly tuned to the people you want to attract. Much like coders who use special programming languages to breathe life into the website they’re building, writers use targeted, special, precise language to breathe life into your site. Your business – and your message – is worth it.

]]>2015-10-29T22:09:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/why-use-remarketing
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/why-use-remarketing#When:17:32:00ZA sad truth for all businesses and their websites is that not every visitor will complete an action the first time they visit you. The likelihood is high that your visitors will periodically retreat to scope out your competition, especially if your business contains a particularly long sales cycle or its products are spendy enough to warrant extra consideration.

So - how do you stay in visitors brains after they leave?

Unless your website has an annoying jingle that seizes control of their subconscious, your best option is remarketing.

To summarize over-simplistically, remarketing (sometimes called “retargeting”) is the practice of utilizing a tool to track all of the previous visitors to your website then subsequently “following” those visitors around the internet with an advertisement.

The benefits of remarketing are numerous.

The most immediately positive and tangible benefit of remarketing is a high conversion rate. The people you are targeting have already visited your website previously, therefore they are more likely than your average internet user to purchase from you or complete the desired action. They considered you once and now they’re coming back. Congratulations! You’re a member of the approved club.

Perhaps equally as important is the cost - or lack thereof. Remarketing remains an exceptionally cheap option in comparison to other forms of digital advertising, with average cost per clicks usually hovering well below the $1 plateau. Would you spend $100 to bring 100 previous visitors back to your website for a second attempt at a sale? For most business owners the answer is yes.

A third benefit of remarketing is the possibility of extreme granularity. Segments can be created that show different ads to different people depending on which pages of your website they viewed. In other words, if your website sells both cupcakes and ice cream, you can show one set of ads to people who viewed your cupcake page and an entirely separate set of ads to people who viewed your ice cream page. The possibilities here are limited only by your imagination.

fourth, less tangible, benefit of remarketing is the idea that you are constantly bombarding people with your business name. Because remarketing operates on a cost per click basis, every time your ad is displayed and is not clicked, the cost of displaying your ad is completely free. With thousands and potentially tens of thousands of free impressions every month, it is possible that somebody will return to your website (without clicking on the ad) simply because you successfully hammered your business name into their brain.

For additional, more complex, details on how remarketing can benefit your business, contact GRAYBOX and we can outline a plan that fits the specific needs of your business.

]]>2015-09-02T17:32:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/tuning-rails-for-the-real-world
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/tuning-rails-for-the-real-world#When:16:07:00Z
Ruby on Rails is a robust framework with a heavy following, and with good reason, it’s incredibly agile and loaded with features. While fantastic when faced with a complicated project, it can quickly become beast-like with pages of tech specs that devours system resources and leaves your clients with hefty hosting bills. There are many schools of thought when it comes to Rails optimization but from my experience the best way to handle performance pitfalls is to anticipate them ahead of time. While each project is different there are many similarities that can be identified early, and developing with them in mind can save you a lot of time.

Template Partials

Rails template partials are a great way to organize elements in your views and keep your code as DRY as possible, but there is a caveat, they will evaluate on each page request and you’ll notice a performance hit the more you add. Using partials for large blocks of elements is good but when you’re iterating over several records I recommend using helpers, if possible. Helper methods will be cached making it a much faster alternative for keeping your code DRY. In the event you decide you would like to switch back, you can call always just call render from within the helper and you’re back to using a partial.

Consider the following scenario, we have a search grid that is returning 50 videos and representing them by thumbnails with a hidden video element that displays on hover. Here are the results on a local box:

With a partial:

Completed 200 OK in 1435ms (Views: 1266.5ms | ActiveRecord: 91.9ms)

Using a helper method with nested content_tag methods:

Completed 200 OK in 791ms (Views: 629.9ms | ActiveRecord: 87.1ms)

One argument in favor of partials is that it’s often assumed that you will be using fragment caching in order to not process the partial each iteration, but my view is the level of optimization achieved through the use of helper methods is too great to ignore in this instance.

Omit Session-specific Data from Templates for Caching

There have been many times I wish I would have taken this approach from the get go. Imagine the scenario from the example above, we’re displaying a grid of videos as the result of a search and we want to have a modal for each one. What if we want to add a download button that only displays for logged in users? We could easily just put <% if user_signed_in? %> and be done with it. But what if we want to use fragment caching? We could create two keys for the cached fragment, one for logged in users and one for anonymous users, but what if we want to display user specific data? Using a javascript object is a great way to keep data that you can use to update your cached elements, especially if they are going to be hidden on page load.

Use pluck when you can

When loading records from the database, rails will select every column by default and instantiate your model. This means you’ll have full access to all the attributes needed by your methods, but it will come at a price, in many cases, you’ll load data you won’t necessarily need in your views. Take our search grid example from earlier, if we only wanted to display a thumbnail with a link to the content we might only need to load three attributes id, title and thumbnail. Here are three ways that load the same data we need for our view:

Using pluck in this scenario gives us quite a boost, though there is a caveat, each record will be returned as an array of values in the order of the arguments passed to pluck. We can reprocess the results to pass to the template like so:

Mapping the values to a hash isn’t necessary but helps with visibility. We could also map a new object with similar attributes to our model but completely stripped, this way our views would not need to be written specifically for plucked collections.

In most cases, we should always be using select/pluck when we can to lighten the load on the database layer, but when should we select and not pluck? When we need to access model methods. For example, our code above assumes the thumbnail url is stored in the db, in most cases, it will be the filename by itself and additional logic will build the path. In this instance, loading the object will be necessary.

Rails provides such an agile environment that it’s easy to get carried away, being cognizant of areas where you can quickly tune your app will really help out when you realize your page load times aren’t going to cut it.

People that aren’t in the web design world are often curious about the creativity designers encompass. How do new ideas come to fruition? How do trends develop? Below are a few tips to keep designers’ creativity honed.

Keep updated with the latest websites produced

Personally, the best way to get my creative juices flowing is to simply browse through beautiful web experiences for inspiration to spark. Awwwards compiles a barrage of beautifully designed websites for users to browse through. Depending on the type of website audience, the theme of the website, marketing aims, and overall brand / user experience, a designer can pick up some pretty nifty design treatments, elements, interactions, and the like, simply by seeing it done well on other websites. This may sound like a form of copycatting, but often times while applying a certain interaction / element / style I’ve seen on a previous website into my own layout, I come up with my own variation - sometimes even 180 degrees different from the inspiration piece!

Brainstorming and Foundational Skills

While inspiration pieces are great, after awhile, some website designs may start feeling stale. Perhaps you may even feel like what you’ve created isn’t really “from you.” That’s when foundational skills and good old-fashioned brainstorming come into play. Play around with the design elements and interactions. Really let loose and experiment! The goal is to choose the right combination of colors, images, treatments, and fonts based on the overall brand / theme of the website being designed.

A brand new, un-thought of user interaction can be created simply by thinking about the user first and placing yourself in their shoes. Some good questions to ask while designing are:

What is the main issue on a website that needs to be resolved?

What is/are their main goal(s) on the website?

What is/are the ideal path(s) to follow?

What needs to happen for them to get to their goal?

How would you want them to behave while on the website?

These are the questions to ask yourself when problem-solving a particular user experience.

The main idea for you as the designer is to use a bit of trial and error to come up with a unique design and experience, both breathtakingly beautiful and highly functional.

Brainstorming as a Group

What’s better than one singular creative mind? Two (or more) creative minds! Brainstorming for ideas usually happens best when in a group setting. The benefit of brainstorming as a group is that each person in the process has a different point of view, so there is far less of a chance of recycling the same ideas over and over again, which can be the case when brainstorming by yourself. There are certain points to keep in mind while brainstorming as a group:

First and foremost, there is no such thing as a bad idea. Feel free to really let loose and let the creative juices flow freely.

Don’t pre-judge other people’s ideas! The whole point of brainstorming as a group is to flush out as many ideas as possible, then later analyze each idea individually to weigh out its pros and cons. Pre-judging another person’s idea can often lead to unnecessary squabbles, low team morale, and an unproductive brainstorming session, all the while snuffing out whatever creativity an individual team member may innately have. Keep channels of communication wide and open, and allow even seemingly silly / crazy ideas to pass through in the initial brainstorming session.

The more ideas, the merrier. True creativity occurs when many ideas leading up to the brilliant moment have already occurred.

Remember all of the silly / crazy ideas mentioned earlier? They can prove useful, as quite often, they can spark great ideas.

Limit the duration of your brainstorming session. The longer it draws out, the more people may become unfocused or frustrated. Up to 30 minutes is a good duration to aim for./li>

A group of up to 6 people is ideal for a brainstorming session. If there are more than 6 individuals, splitting into two separate groups can make the session more manageable / productive for all involved.

After the initial brainstorming session, analysis of each individual idea should take place. This evaluation should be performed in a single group. Weigh out the pros and cons of each idea, and filter out good ideas from the rest.

Choose a brainstorm leader who will keep track of time, organize / manage the session, and most importantly, enforce the points mentioned above.

Inspiration from Outside Forces

There is no doubt that inspiration can come from anywhere. The best creative minds often draw inspiration from songs they listen to, nature they encounter, or artwork they view. It’s up to you to simply be open and mindful, while observing the world around you to draw inspiration from. Don’t just look, but see.

]]>2015-08-25T16:02:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/adwords-a-b-split-testing
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/adwords-a-b-split-testing#When:16:03:00Z
You have very likely heard it before - that “A/B Testing” really means “Always Be Testing.”

While that is not actually the truth, it is a memorable mnemonic trick to help businesses remember that testing is a fundamental building block of digital marketing. That is especially true within paid search where it is exceptionally easy to churn through money wastefully with little to no benefit.

However, I still frequently hear from businesses who allow their AdWords campaigns to operate in “auto pilot” mode - essentially trusting what they have initially created to perform adequately without daily, weekly or monthly improvements. The fundamental flaw of that approach is its complete deficiency in a/b split testing - a crucial component for elevating AdWords performance from satisfactory to elite.

There are countless methods of a/b split testing in AdWords that every business should implement. Though the following are critically important:

Landing Pages

You can read about landing page best practices in my previous blog, but even the most attractive and optimized AdWords landing pages should always undergo rigorous testing. Businesses can drastically improve their conversion rates simply by altering or relocating a CTA button, changing headlines, experimenting with new text, etc.

My recommendation with landing page testing is to conduct only one experiment at a time. If you turn too many knobs at once, you are never actually aware of which knob “opened the door,” so to speak, to achieving higher conversion rates.

Ad Copy

Testing new ad copy is the simplest and most widely utilized practice among AdWords a/b split testers. The most widely utilized approach is to analyze a series of ads within the confines of one ad group, pause ads with the lowest click through rates, then create new ads using the “winning” ad as a base (with slight modifications).

This process works well, however, I have seen countless businesses (as well as professional marketers) judge the winning and losing ads simply based on click through rate, which is misleading. When judging an ad, it is absolutely crucial to consider the average positions of the ads being analyzed. The average position of an ad affects its CTR, meaning an ad with an average position of 1.0 will always have a higher CTR than an identical with an average position of 2.5. To effectively judge winning and losing ads one must understand and consider this important caveat.

Campaign Settings

Campaign settings, especially advanced settings, are frequently overlooked by the dozens of in-your-face KPIs that bombard you upon loading AdWords. However, a/b testing your campaign settings can actually yield drastically different (and often better) results. I recommend the testing the following:

Turning “Search Partners” on or off

Adjusting mobile bids

Adjusting geographic bids

Trying new bid strategy types altogether

Changing ad delivery to “accelerated”

Changing “location > target” options to “people in my targeted location” and “people in my excluded location” as opposed to people interested in or viewing pages in those locations (the default).

One important thing to remember is there is no such thing as a bad test. For every mistake that is made, a lesson is learned. And the likelihood of wasting money in the future dwindles.

Now get out there and start testing!

]]>2015-08-20T16:03:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/an-introduction-to-visual-thinking
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/an-introduction-to-visual-thinking#When:17:10:00ZAt GRAYBOX, we work with clients, coders, designers, and thinkers of all shapes and sizes. Each of them has a unique method of thinking and communicating. The information locked in each team member's brain is extremely valuable, and it's our job to somehow extract that information and gather it into a clear, actionable project plan.

So, how do we communicate complex information in a clear, coherent and efficient manner? We use a tool called 'Visual Thinking' to help facilitate the process.

What is Visual Thinking?

Visual thinking is essentially the process of thinking through visual processing. In the business world, we think of it as a method of organizing thoughts to make it easier to communicate with others and improve your ability to think. The key concept to remember is to use visual aids to illustrate and externalize complicated, internal thoughts and ideas. Most of the time discussions in a visual thinking process are aided by tools such as pens, paper, sticky notes, and whiteboards.

Why Use Visual Thinking Strategies?

People think (and learn) in different ways. Some people think in words. Some people think in images. Most people use a combination of both. It is thought that up to 65% of people are visual thinkers and learners. That's a lot of people. Information, though highly important to a projects success, can be overwhelming, and when our brains have reached their capacity for information intake, we tend to start daydreaming or shut down completely. Visual thinking is meant to cut through the information clutter and get to the essence of each problem, making the intake of that information much simpler and less taxing to our brains. This allows our minds to stay fresh, move quickly and solve problems more accurately.

Who Can Use Visual Thinking?

If you've ever scribbled a doodle on a notebook then you can doodle on a whiteboard to aid communication with a co-worker. Almost anyone has the ability to illustrate an idea with a drawing. Drawings don't have to be masterpieces, they just need to get a basic concept across to another person. Think simple. Break more complex things into smaller, easier-to-draw shapes and only draw what's necessary. This is sometimes referred to as the 'visual alphabet.' Here's a video that can get you communicating visually in a few minutes:

When Do I Use Visual Thinking?

You can likely use visual thinking any time you're trying to communicate or organize your ideas. I find that visual thinking is most helpful when discussing a problem with team members on a project.

Explaining or attempting to solve a complex problem with a team member or client

Brainstorming ideas for a new feature

Attempting to organize content on a website

Deciding the priority of work to be done on a project

Mapping the user's path through a website visit

Visualizing the desired emotion of a customer when using your product

How Do I Use Visual Thinking?

There are many strategies that adhere to the 'Visual Thinking' methodology. Identifying the type of information you want to extract or communicate may help choose a method. In the end, there are probably several ways to accomplish your goal.
Gamestorming is a great book full of activities you can use to kickstart the visual thinking process.

Illustrate how data is connected on a whiteboard

Draw a magazine cover that represents your brand as a celebrity

Sketch a story of your user's daily life and how your product fits into it

Organize website content onto index cards and then move content around to see where it fits best

Draw a before and after version of your customer, complete with emotion

What Do I Do Next?

The proof is in the pudding. Start doodling! The next time you find yourself struggling to understand what someone is trying to explain to you offer them a pen and ask them to draw a picture instead. Chances are it'll help speed the conversation and get you to a point of mutual understanding quickly. It's important to keep practicing and to make drawing a habit that's part of every meeting. If you're hungry to learn more, Google has a tremendous amount of information on the subject to keep you exploring.

]]>2015-08-18T17:10:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/how-to-integrate-magento-with-netsuite
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/how-to-integrate-magento-with-netsuite#When:16:23:00Z
As I've discussed in previous articles, the pairing of Magento and NetSuite for ecommerce and back office is one of the best dollar-for-dollar business systems investments a company can make. Magento (Magento Enterprise in particular) provides enterprise quality features to maximize the value you can achieve from each site visitor. NetSuite provides a robust and flexible suite of tools for managing all of the events that happen after the sale, as well as, insights into your customers and business operations to continually evolve and improve the business. Whether your business is B2B or B2C focused, this combination can provide an excellent foundation for business growth.

The main stumbling block companies tend to encounter when using this combination is actually integrating the two systems. A common mistake when implementing one or both of these systems is to overlook the actual business requirements for what you want to accomplish by connecting the two systems, and precisely how these two systems need to communicate to accomplish those goals. There are a number of approaches, ranging from purely manual to fully automated, and the best approach for your business will depend on a number of factors. Beyond the B2B vs. B2C distinction (a big distinction as you consider integration options), other factors such as order volume, number of SKUs, and frequency of changes to data are all factors that should play into the decision. Knowing specifically what experience you want to create for your customers, and the information your business needs to successfully operate, are critical steps in planning your integration.

Assuming your business needs some degree of automation, the options break down into two categories:

Integration "connectors" can be a quick solution to get up and running. They're often programmed to sufficiently meet the most common 70% of business use cases, and are generally priced as a "monthly" fee, which spreads the cash flow over time (assuming you're actually allowed to pay monthly). As a general rule of thumb, consider pre-built connectors as a small house with a low mortgage payment: If your requirements fit in that house, it's a nice cozy home you can afford on a tight budget. If your requirements fall somewhat outside that home, it can be inconvenient, uncomfortable, or simply not a good fit at all, regardless of how cheap it is to maintain. The decision on whether or not to stay in that home becomes a factor of just how much pain it introduces to your life versus the benefit it provides.

Custom Built Integrations generally take longer to develop, and are thus more costly up front. However, they are tailored to your specific business requirements, which means they accomplish 100% of what you need to meet your business goals. Rather than living on a vendor's servers, they can co-exist on the same server as your Magento installation because you own the code base. To continue the analogy, a custom built integration is the home you've always wanted, where every room has a purpose and you've left yourself plenty of room for expansion on a big piece of property. The catch is that you had to pay for your house up front, but in exchange you own your home outright-- there's no monthly mortgage. The decision on whether or not to have the home of your dreams is similarly a factor of how much pain it alleviates as compared to the cost of alleviating that pain.

There are hundreds of factors to be considered in determining the business requirements surrounding a NetSuite Magento Integration. I've selected five below that are both common among ecommerce businesses and tend to be more tricky than they might appear at first blush.

Data to Move Between NetSuite and Magento

When most people look to integrate their website to their accounting system, they think of three things:

New Customers should flow from Magento to NetSuite;

Item Quantities should flow from NetSuite to Magento, and update as orders are placed in Magento; and

Orders placed in Magento should flow into NetSuite, tied to the customer, referencing the items purchased.

While these certainly represent the core types of data, it leaves very large gaps both on the Magento side and on the NetSuite side. For example: If your customers are able to login and see their order history, should that history include any orders they placed via the phone directly with a support rep? If so, then you likely need an integration to push Order data from NetSuite to Magento, but only when that customer exists in both systems. Understanding the points at which you interact with your customers, and how you want your customers to experience those touch points, is very important to planning a successful integration.

As a best practice, I generally recommend starting by listing the different transaction and data types that are tied to a customer. In the B2C world, for example, Invoices may not apply but Return Authorizations may be heavily used. Similarly, in the B2B world, many customers won't check out with or store credit card information, whereas B2C customers may expect this functionality. Fundamentally, these decisions pivot on a detailed understanding of the experience you are trying to provide your customers, and making a plan that ensures they have the ability to create, access, and send data that makes their transaction with you as frictionless as possible.

As discussed above, pre-built connectors tend to be targeted at the most common business requirements. But each business has (and SHOULD have) a unique formula for customer interactions, transaction policies, and the ways in which they strive to make an excellent customer experience. Understanding and planning for the business goals driving your Magento NetSuite integration will serve as an excellent litmus test for evaluating whether a connector can be used or a custom integration is required.

How and When to Capture Funds

Working with credit cards can be fraught with complications. Leaving aside security concerns for the moment, think through the chain of events that are required to checkout with a credit card: The user inputs their card information to your site; your site transmits that card information via payment gateway to a merchant account; that merchant account facilitates communication with the issuing bank of the customer's credit card, ensuring funds move from their account to your account; the response from the customer's bank flows back up the chain to the merchant account, to the gateway, and to your website, where a success or rejection response is provided to the customer. All this happens nearly instantly.

Credit card security (generally lumped into the category of PCI Compliance) adds another dimension. Not only must we pass data across multiple links in this chain, but it must be done securely, and the timing and information must conform to particular guidelines.

In a typical ecommerce flow, the customer's credit card is authorized at the time the order is placed. This Authorization ensures the card is valid and has sufficient funds for the transaction, and generally places a "hold" on those funds. The key here is that authorizations are valid for a finite number of days, for a fixed dollar amount, and are tied to a specific authorization token. This is all in place to help prevent fraudulent activities.

But what if your business doesn't conform exactly to traditional ecommerce processes?

Scenario 1: A company sells customized furniture online, which generally has an 8-10 week build time. By the time the furniture is ready to ship, the authorization would have long since expired. As a result, the company's process needs to be different in that they both authorize AND capture funds from the Customer credit card at the time of purchase. This mitigates the risk of the customer placing an order for custom furniture and then refusing to pay 8 weeks later when it's complete.

In this scenario, Magento needs to initiate both the authorization and funds capture. The data pushed via your integration to NetSuite will contain a slightly different set of information. Additionally, there are settings on the sales order that must be set to prevent NetSuite from attempting to re-charge the card on fulfillment.

Free tip: In this case, the "Get Authorization" field must be set to FALSE and the Credit Card Approved field set to TRUE on the Sales Order. When the Sales Order is billed and transformed to a Cash Sale to record the accounting impact of the revenue, this combination will tell the system to set the "Charge Credit Card" field on the Cash Sale to FALSE, and the Credit Card Approved field to TRUE, and ensure the system merely posts the Cash Sale as Revenue, and does not attempt to recharge the customer credit card.

Scenario 2: Some businesses need to store credit card information for subsequent transactions. It could be the business will ship an order in multiple installments, only charging the card when items have shipped. If they are performing funds capture as the items ship over time, likely the original authorization has expired, requiring they have the card on-file to charge the next increment. Alternatively, a company may sell a product that also has a recurring subscription component. This may involve a recurring monthly charge for months or years into the future, which requires the card to be stored and accessible. This second scenario introduces data integration questions regarding both the secure passing and storage of credit card data.

A business cannot assume that either a pre-built connector or a custom integration will simply be setup to do these types of activities. These are generally detailed conversations in the solution planning phase of a project to ensure the underlying business requirements are well defined, the spectrum of data to be passed related to credit cards is well understood, a secure method of transmission and storage is in place, and the configurations of NetSuite are such that they will support the ongoing nature of these transactions.

Handling Sales Discounts and Promotion Codes

For all the things NetSuite does really well, Promotion Codes and Sales Discounts have not traditionally been included in that list. NetSuite's promotion codes are stored at the header level of the Sales Order transaction. The promotion code contains rules for when it will or will not apply, and is tied to a discount item that actually dictates the dollar or percent discount to be applied to the order. This model has some limitations:

There is only ONE field for tracking the Promotion Code used, meaning a customer cannot use multiple promotion codes on the same order.

The application of a promotion code is limited by the rules specified by NetSuite. If your rules involve discounts for some items, BOGOs for others, or are linked by other relationship logic, NetSuite's promo codes may not natively work.

Most integration connectors assume your use of Promotion Codes in Magento follows one of two approaches:

You will limit your use of Magento to match the capabilities of NetSuite, meaning less robust capabilities for customer discounts in your webstore; OR

You will only pass the net transaction amount (original less the discount to be applied) into NetSuite. In this scenario, you can do whatever you want for promotion codes in Magento, but you have to live with less reporting visibility in NetSuite when those discount codes are applied.

Obviously both of these are undesirable options. Part of the reason companies implement Magento is to leverage the more sophisticated toolset it provides. Similarly, passing only the net transaction amounts negates much of the reporting natively found in NetSuite when using promotion codes and discount items. It's important, therefore, to build a detailed understanding of both sides of this fence before planning your integration so that you maintain flexibility in your use of Promotion Codes in Magento without risking a loss of reporting data and visibility into customer behaviors in NetSuite.

Handling Sales Tax

Beyond being a boring subject, Sales Tax collection has the additional distinction of being a very difficult subject. The landscape is complex, and is currently in a state of flux. As of the writing of this entry, there are changes taking place at both the state and federal levels to attempt to restructure the ways in which sales tax is collected on internet sales.

Limiting our discussion here to purely domestic (US) ecommerce, most states have a patchwork of tax rules by jurisdiction, generally rolling up separate district, city, county, and state tax rates into a combined "rate" for a particular address. Unfortunately, the details determining which rate to use are often more granular than zip code or state, sometimes changing house-by-house in some jurisdictions. Strict compliance is challenging to say the least, and businesses often need to make a materiality decision on how best to approach the problem. Moreover, a business likely does not have a tax nexus in every state. As a VERY general rule (please please please consult your CPA) an operational presence in a state, such as an office, remote employees based in that state, or a distribution center, will establish a nexus in that state. Businesses beware: As mentioned above, this environment is changing. Washington State, for example, has in the past few years become very aggressive in determining a business has a nexus in their state. One of my clients participated once a year in a 4-day consumer show held at a Washington State fairground. The state of Washington determined this established a business nexus in the state at the same level as having a physical store in the state, and demanded they remit sales tax for ALL orders they had shipped to Washington State via their ecommerce site (not just sales from the show) for all the years they had participated in the show, resulting in a tax bill of tens of thousands of dollars.

Magento's out-of-the-box tax calculation rules are fairly straightforward, and as a result are not generally sophisticated enough to meet actual statutory regulations. They simply aim to get close and make a good faith effort. Additional add-on services are available to attempt to make this more accurate, but they typically are no more accurate than capabilities in NetSuite. However, NetSuite by no means makes the solution easy. There are three separate tax configurations in NetSuite (Tax, Advanced Taxes, Per-Line Tax) that build on each other to provide increasingly specific levels of control. At the end of the day, the tax is still only calculated to the Zip Code level of granularity, meaning jurisdictions with more fine-grain tax rules will still be inaccurate.

There are many approaches to solving these problems. Some common approaches include integrating to NetSuite's tax tables to augment Magento and get a much more accurate (but still imprecise) calculation; always charge the highest tax rate per jurisdiction to be "safe," knowing you will overpay by a fraction of a percent but avoid legal issues; or integrating to more sophisticated third party software that better manages tax liability.

Obviously, all three of these approaches will impact your integration plans. If, for example, the business decides to leverage the tools it has and integrate NetSuite Advanced Tax tables to Magento, most likely the pre-built connector does not have a pre-built solution for this data set, and Magneto's tax tables will need to be augmented to accommodate the richer data set from NetSuite. Suddenly the goal of saving money by avoiding a third party service means paying for one integration, custom building a second integration, modifying Magento, and still having a less than perfect solution to tax. Similarly, integrating to a third party service means there is an additional data call to an external source that has to take place as a part of checkout, which means orchestrating two integration services around the same checkout action.

It's not an easy problem to solve, and, as mentioned above, there is a cost-benefit analysis on the materiality of just how precise one needs to be, as the additional cost of precise compliance may exceed the benefits of achieving compliance. But understanding the legal and business framework in which your ecommerce site is going to operate is an incredibly important step on the path to a successful NetSuite Magento integration.

Impact of Specific Magento or NetSuite Configurations

NetSuite and Magento are two sophisticated platforms. They offer a wide range of features that are more configuration than customization, allowing the tools to be molded to your business, rather than molding your business to fit the tools. An unintended consequence of this flexibility is that settings between systems can be setup to conflict with each other, and sometimes pre-built integration connectors aren't capable of resolving the conflict or gracefully failing in a way that allows you to resolve the issue.

Given the depth and breadth of both systems, I'll limit the discussion here to just a couple common issues:

Multi-Location Inventory: This is an easy one, since most pre-built connectors WILL have a configuration option to accommodate. Multi-Location Inventory in NetSuite (MLI) allows the business to track items in different Locations, typically representing physical warehouses. The attribute is configured just like Departments or Classes, but has a more ubiquitous impact on the system in that every transaction requires a Location designation. For an integrated ecommerce site, this means making sure the integration is looking at the proper location (or locations) when determining available inventory quantities, and submitting the order to the appropriate location for fulfillment.

NetSuite Custom Form Configurations: NetSuite allows users to configure different forms for different purposes. For example, a Customer Support Sales Order form may have basic order details, but not allow edits and hide credit card information. Custom forms can be configured such that fields are required or disabled when using that form, but are enabled and optional when using other forms, and vice versa. When integrating customer and order data from Magento to NetSuite, it's important to understand your NetSuite configurations and how they may impact the successful transmission of data to the system. If a field is required or disabled on the UI form in NetSuite, but the integration has not been setup to capture and pass that info, submitting that record may fail.

Workflows (SuiteFlow): The SuiteFlow/Workflows tool is an excellent mechanism for users to create custom business rules and processes without the need to write code. However, these will often include rules setup for users operating through the NetSuite User Interface, and not be configured to operate for orders being created via an integration with Magento. Ensuring the execution context is either limited to the user interface, or includes web services integrations (based on whether or not you want the Workflows to execute on Magento-originating data) is an important review step in successfully integrating the two systems.

Integrating two systems is a complicated business. Different software is built by different teams, with different goals, and under differing levels of planning. Fortunately, NetSuite and Magento are both built on a foundation that assumes they will be integrating with other systems. As such, the bulk of time spent in an integration between these two systems should be spend in mapping the business processes and touch points between the two systems to ensure the two end points can successfully communicate. While there are certainly challenges, and a long list of potential gotchas to avoid, it's not a unique problem, and it has been solved for many businesses in the past. The key is understanding your business requirements and understanding the deep capabilities and features of these two systems.

]]>2015-08-13T16:23:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/multi-language-websites
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/multi-language-websites#When:14:39:00Z
Building a complex website can be a daunting task, but when the site requires multiple languages the project can quickly swell into a world of impossibilities. Let’s break down the big pieces into the little bites.

Multi-Language Webpage Content

When a service or device consumes content on a page, it looks for specific clues in the form of HTML tags to give it information about the details on the page. This includes language. The Internal Organization for Standardization (ISO) has defined the two-character codes for each language. The web uses these codes to identify the language used within content on a page.

Each well-formed webpage has a top-level “html” tag. This tag should identify the default human-read language on the page. This is true even if there are multiple languages used on a single page, there should be a “default” language set.

<html lang="fr">

But what happens if we have content on the page in a different language other than the default?

We can have a page in English with some of the content in another language, and still identify that to the content reader. The same “lang” attribute can be applied to any markup tag.

If the language of the destination document is in a different language than the current default language, you can also specify this with the "hreflang" attribute in the anchor tag.

<a href="file.html" lang="fr" hreflang="fr">Francais</a>

But what happens when there isn’t a tag to hang your attribute on? Adding an inline span is the way to go:

<p>You'd say that in Chinese as <span lang="zh-Hans">中国科学院文献情报中心</span>.</p>

CSS switches for multiple languages in a site

Within the HTML 4.0 standard is a pseudo-class for language definition and formatting within CSS. This gives you the flexibility to update the font used, or any other attribute on the font required.
This is not supported in older version of Safari and Internet Explorer 7 and below.

When your browser loads a webpage, it does its best to present the content consistently with the target language of the page. This includes the character set defined and how the letters are encoded, which fonts to use and how they must be displayed.

Your browser surmises this from several sources:

The content header delivered by the web server. Apache will deliver a character encoding header that looks similar to this:

Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-4

The character encoding declaration in the HTML document itself. If the web server configuration or server-side scripting language cannot add the content type header, the encoding can be declared in the document itself:

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">

Or in HTML5 the same declaration can be made like this:

<meta charset="utf-8">

Content sniffing - the browser reads through clues in the content itself and determines which character encoding should be employed.

If the browser can not determine the encoding, it will make its best guess. Many times the best guess can return unexpected and undesirable results.

Content Storage Approaches

Multiple languages present a challenge to content management. Depending on the type of content, the type of website, the size of the data set, and the staff resources, there are different approaches to take in storing and presenting your site content. Most multiple-language sites use a combination of the following techniques:

In-line Token Replacement

One of the simplest approaches to storing language for use in a multiple language site is to use dictionary token replacement. For example, the navigation may include a "home" link that is replaced with "inicio" in Spanish. This token replacement method is usually the easiest to employ, but is generally not flexible or scalable enough to handle content-rich websites. These tokens are very useful for simple words or phrases that are common throughout the site such as navigation, footer info, filters, or other user experience link text. Generally, this type of information is stored in a text file (such as a language override file in ExpressionEngine or Magento), a simple table with one row per token and one column per language, or if the number of languages is large, as an Entity–attribute–value (EAV) model data set.

Full Site

Many times, the target language will contain a very different navigation, images and text content. An approach to storing the data in this situation may be to re-create the entire data structure of the site (reusing any templates, of course) and load the content based on
a different domain name (example: http://techcrunch.cn/), the segment in the directory path of the URL (Trenitalia in English: http://www.trenitalia.com/tcom-en Trenitalia in Italian: http://www.trenitalia.com/tcom) or as a subdomain (example: The Spanish version of CNN can be found at http://cnnespanol.cnn.com/). This gives the most freedom to the target language site construction, SEO, navigation and content but requires the most amount of content management. This approach works very well if there are separate content management teams for each language.

Alternative Records for Each Entry

For a small or medium sized brochure website with a single marketing department managing one set of content but presented in multiple languages, the content exists once, with alternative fields or records available for the target languages. This keeps the overall management of the content centralized, with the language localization managed per-record. When a new article, blog post or static page is added, it is inserted in the target language as the parent record. Translations in each available location language are then inserted and updated to be associated with the original record. During the presentation stage processing of the data on the front-end, the parent record URL is loaded, and if the session (or url parameter) dictates a language switch, the alternate translation is displayed in its stead.

Final Thoughts

Always help your visitors out with proper headers and encoding meta information to ensure the browser renders the target language exactly as desired. Proper content strategy and planning can save dozens of hours of heartache and make the experience smooth for everyone.

]]>2015-08-06T14:39:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/best-practices-for-landing-pages
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/best-practices-for-landing-pages#When:18:25:00Z
Have you ever frantically searched the house for your keys only to discover them in your pocket minutes later!?It is a situation that is closely analogous to a common theme within the digital marketing world. Right now, thousands of companies are metaphorically rifling through drawers, retracing their steps, and checking yesterday’s coat pockets in the attempt to find the key to their conversion optimization problems. It is right there front of them, tucked into their collective pockets.

The key to unlocking conversion success lies with improving your landing pages, most of which already exist and already receive widespread utilization. It begins by following five basic principles:

Emphasize the CTA

The logic is simple, but often times this seemingly obvious step is overlooked. Your call-to-action, whatever that may be, should always appear very prominently on your landing page and should ideally comprise its primary visual component. Forcing somebody to scroll down to locate your form will cost you a percentage of conversions, which multiplied across hundreds or thousands of visitors is tremendously significant.

Eliminate Barriers

Any potential barrier to a desired action should be eliminated. “Barriers” take many forms and cannot be easily summarized, but generally speaking, a barrier is anything that slows down or distracts a visitor, as well as anything that adds unnecessary steps between a visitor and the desired goal.

Keep your forms short and only ask for information that is absolutely necessary. Simple lead generation forms should be kept to five fields or less, with one field each for a name, phone number, and email address as well as up to two “wildcard” fields depending on your business. Anything beyond five fields becomes cumbersome to a user and is proven to diminish conversion rates.

Other barriers include pop ups, links leading away from the page itself and text that is overly robust. As fantastic as your writing may be, most people will not have the patience to read it. This is especially true above the fold. Make your point quickly and use bullets instead of full sentences to make your pitch. If you must, try to relocate your lengthier pieces of text below the fold toward the middle or bottom of the page.

Keyword Granularity

This is especially important in the world of paid search. Ideally, every ad group should contain its own landing page that matches up almost identically with its triggering queries. For example, a keyword search for “web design in Portland” would send people to a different landing page than the keyword search for “ecommerce web design” - despite the fact that “web design” is shared between the two. Ideally, headlines on each landing page should cater to that specific search, as well as, small deviations in text to mirror the query.

Depending on the level of sophistication with your paid search accounts this may require the creation of dozens to potentially hundreds of landing pages, most of which would contain borderline duplicate content. To prevent an SEO penalty it is important to block those landing pages from the search engines via the robots.txt file.

Mobile-Friendliness

The mobile revolution changed everything. If your landing pages are not mobile-friendly then you are hindering your ability to generate conversions in roughly half or more of all visits. The same principles stated above still apply, though there is more forgiveness regarding the CTA and its location on the page (scrolling is okay on mobile!)

Compelling Copy

Subjective? Yes. But everyone knows it when they see it. Spend time perfecting and experimenting with ad copy that grabs attention, makes your point quickly, and resonates with visitors. Bland rarely wins - so writing with an edgy personality can be more effective than writing with no personality. The key here is experimentation. Run a/b tests to decide what is most effective.

By following these key steps you can improve your conversion rates nearly overnight. Good luck!

2015 is halfway done, and we are already looking toward the future of
web design. What new trends will pop up? Which ones will finally be laid to rest? One can only predict, but we have some strong tell-tale signs of what we will be seeing in the year 2016.

Overall Prediction: More Unique Experiences

With Responsive Web Design becoming even more ubiquitous, laying out webpages has fallen into the same predictable patterns. A 3-up stack of boxes to point out sales features here, a 9x9 grid format on a photo gallery there, we’ve reached a point where the majority of “pretty websites” all look the same.

"We’ve reached a point where the majority of “pretty websites” all look the same"(CLICK TO TWEET)

In 2016, I predict we will see more well-thought out and unique
user experiences. To achieve this, designers can integrate personal touches for a more unique feel, such as custom-created illustration work, hand-drawn artwork, a new way to incorporate a grid, or even an unconventional way of storytelling to their users.

Prediction 1: Unique Way of Using the Grid

You’ll quickly notice the photos of this website stacked on top of each other. Stacking them isn’t a problem, as when a user rolls over on an image, the Z-index of the selected image shifts, so it is pushed to the top of the pile of photos.

Upon scroll, the haphazard arrangement of their logo falls into place to spell out their company name.

Prediction 2: Custom-Drawn Illustrations

We’ve all thought it - “Why should I draw another [name of object] icon, when I can just grab it off an already existing vector pack from the web?” This line of thinking does save time and budget constraints, but how about integrating custom-made illustrations, or other artwork into the project budget in the first place?

Prediction 3: Better / More Access to Great Typefaces

We should all be thanking Google for its
free font collection. Because of the company’s library, utilizing a great looking typeface on a limited budget can be achieved. With varying styles, weights, families, and the like, there is sure to be quite a few typefaces that are suitable for any website.

Prediction 4: Cinemagraphs

Did that picture just….move? I love cinemagraphs because like videos and photography, it enhances the desired mood for a website and gives it an additional layer of wonder, mystique, and elegance. Unlike videos, it won’t eat as much bandwidth, and unlike photos, it provides “something more” than a simple still shot. This technology has been around for a while already (since 2011), and I hope to see it integrated into more websites in the future.

Prediction 5: Websites Through the Use of Storytelling

Storytelling through means of a website can be quite a complex endeavor. Nike and Lidyana did a great job with
this website.

Best viewed on a high-speed internet connection, the website takes you through the morning workout routines of a young woman. The opening sequence is of her waking up in the morning. After she gets settled into her routine, the user has a choice of seeing her do different types of exercise activities, such as yoga, running, weight training, and the like. If the user clicks on one of the activities, they are then presented with the young woman performing said activity.

The user is then presented with hot spots on the body of the young woman while she is working out, with links to Nike products she is wearing during her routines. This is a great way to showcase the product in-use, as well as providing the user with direct access to view the product details. If the user clicks on a hot-spot, the products she is wearing load in from the side, while pausing the video.

Through this type of interaction, the user can quickly run through all of the activities with the young lady, while browsing the products she is wearing, without even knowing they are shopping!

Earlier mentioned websites such as
For Better Coffee or Ice & Sky also do a great job of integrating storytelling on their websites. Something as simple as teaching a user how to make the perfect brew, or being educated on the history of Antarctica can be fun, interactive, and a great learning experience!

Prediction 6: Semi-flat design

Flat design has slowly morphed over the past few years to semi-flat design. After Windows launched its Metro style, the design world became inundated with this trend. Unfortunately, this style did come with its usability pitfalls. This trend has slowly morphed into semi-flat design, largely in part due to both Android’s and Apple’s releases using this type of style. By integrating depth and dimension through the use of subtle shadows, card / tile concepts, and well-thought out transitions to help guide and orient users, semi-flat design aims to eliminate the problems that flat design had created.

Prediction 7: RWD

Let’s face it, after the implementation of RWD, there was no turning back. There will only be more devices sold on the market, so embracing and integrating responsive practices on websites will make the web sphere a better place for all.

Prediction 8: Parallax

A couple of the websites mentioned earlier already utilize parallax on their websites. As mentioned in a previous GRAYBOX article, parallax is a type of effect applied to the speed and movement of background imagery. The background of the website moves at a different speed than the rest of the page, thereby mimicking layers of depth on the page. As computers and related technology get better at handling such effects on the web, access to viewing these unique animations will only increase.
Scroll For Your Health is a great example of a fun, interactive, and educational way to present information on different fruits, while employing parallax.

Prediction 9: Lazy Loading

On websites that feed content continuously, Lazy Loading aids in viewing immediate website content without waiting for the entire page to load.

This is especially helpful for websites that are highly visual, such as
Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest. In a society where information is constantly being fed into our lives, lazy loading helps to simplify viewing of said content by loading only small chunks at a time.

Pinterest

We’re excited to see what new trends, styles, and stories 2016 will bring for us, and what trends and movements will fade out within the next year and beyond!

]]>2015-07-22T14:55:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/embracing-the-power-of-design-thinking
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/embracing-the-power-of-design-thinking#When:17:33:00ZRefining how GRAYBOX thinks about design, planning and meetings

I’m a practical guy. I believe that meetings should have order, that questions should have answers and that all problems are solvable with a good process in hand. This means that most projects at GRAYBOX have always walked a fairly linear path. We gather information, analyze that input, recommend a solution, then implement it. While most of our projects take about six months, the data gathering stage typically ends around the first month and then we build for the remaining time of the project.

We’ve always cared about the quality of our work above everything else, but almost all of the planning would happen at the beginning of the project. This made sense when we used to do mostly smaller work — but now some of our projects are years in duration and we’ve realized we need a way to incorporate both planning and execution into all stages of the project.

Moreover, our team is larger than ever before — we have 20 people with a wide variety of skills and expertise, and we needed a mechanism to help surface that knowledge. GRAYBOX provides the best value to our clients when we can speak into all aspects of their business; we have experts in four main areas, Marketing, Creative, Technology, and Business Operations. And all are inter-related. What we do from a tech standpoint can impact their marketing and thus impact their business reporting. The best work lies at the intersection of these points.

We need a new approach that accomplishes a few key things at once:

Encourages collaboration among our team and with our clients

Safely encourages others to share their experiences and teach from their past lessons

Constantly reevaluate our work in light of new information and refine our work over time

Surface ideas from the entire team, regardless of size

Collaboratively make decisions with total group buy-in

An answer for us has been starting to incorporate Design Thinking into our process. We feel like we’ve just dipped our toes into the water, but it’s already having an impact on our communication, collaboration and, most importantly, the quality of work we produce for our clients. Let’s look at the results and see how we’re getting us there.

Communication

The first thing we learned is that Design Thinking isn’t a specific moment in time or a box to check off a checklist – rather it’s a different way of working & thinking together. Like the design process, we’ve acknowledged that long projects can be messy and follow a nonlinear path. Good ideas can come from anywhere and we need to remain flexible.

As such, we’re establishing some new processes to encourage communication across our teams. Practically, this means more time spent physically together; more time in short check-in meetings; more time to build plans and validate solutions; and more time seeking out other people’s opinions. If we want input from all sources, we need to create time for that communication to happen.

Collaboration

Likewise, to increase communication, we’ve used Design Thinking to expand our team collaboration. To make the best quality work, we need our team to work together so we can all bring our individual perspectives to bear. Our team is separated into four groups — Marketing, Creative, Technical, and Business Consulting — and it’s imperative that each is heard so we can continue to create quality work. It’s unrealistic that one person can look out for all these facets alone.

So we needed to make sure our teams’ collaboration builds solutions together. To do this, we’ve formalized a review process so each team signs off on another team’s plan before the client sees it. More importantly, someone from each team actively participates in all planning or solution design meetings so we have their input from the start.

One powerful Design Thinking tool we’ve used a lot recently is posting up our answers to a shared wall instead of just discussing the subject openly. A discussion is great for depth, but by its nature, it’s a linear path for the entire group. If we post up our answers it forces everyone to share their perspective and we get ideas from all sides in the group.

Safe Spaces to Share Experiences

This one is key — to encourage collaboration and open up communication, we need to make sure that we have a safe place where the team can feel like they can share ideas without judgement. We have MANY bad ideas, but they are just as important as they help us find the good ones.

This means we acknowledge each others’ ideas and we are candid in discussing them instead of just ignoring them. Moreover, we are shifting our thinking from believing someone already has the answer, and instead, understanding that it’s a process for us to reach a resolution together.

One thing we’re trying to do is not TELL how something should be done as that’s definitive and prescriptive. Instead, we’re trying to tell stories — tangible stories of our successes or failures that help illuminate similar situations and help provide guidance to the team.

Assimilating New Information

Since we are trying to get all these new inputs, it’s critical that we know how to consume this information and help us adjust our plans as we go along. This means that after our major “discovery” phase the planning phase isn’t done. Rather, as each feature or step goes into the building phase, we circle back to reconfirm the plan before that individual thing is built.

Group Buy-In

One nice side effect of our new collaboration and communication paradigm has been increased buy-in of the solution and work by our entire team and our clients — everyone has a seat at the table, so everyone has felt more valued and apart of the process. Moreover, with our clients positioned more as equal participants in the process (instead of stakeholders or observers) they also feel more engaged in the process; resulting in greater ownership of the outcome.

Since we are all “designers” of the solution, we all own it together.

Documentation of Thinking

Finally, an unexpected effect of using these design thinking frameworks has been that we now have a more thorough documentation of our decision making process. When we have these collaborative meetings, we end up whiteboarding quite a bit — and we capture these “artifacts” by just taking a quick picture of the board. If we have time, we then scribe these notes into a cleaner format and can post them into our Project Management utility. It’s been amazing how much we reference past drawings or ideas now that we capture them all.

At times, the abstraction of bringing Design Thinking systems into GRAYBOX has been painful for me — sometimes I just want to declare a solution and have it built. But, as we’ve started to embrace the ambiguity as a necessary part of the refinement process, it’s been a powerful agent for change in the organization. We’re communicating better, we collaborate better and we all bring more care than we did before – we’re a better team and we produce better work as a result. I challenge you to try it yourself.

]]>2015-07-09T17:33:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/best-negative-keywords-for-a-brand-campaign
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/best-negative-keywords-for-a-brand-campaign#When:16:52:00Z
The idea of advertising for your own brand name in Google AdWords seemingly evokes the most Shakespearean of all questions.

To bid or not to bid?

The answer is always ‘yes,’ assuming you apply an adequate level of method to your madness.

While the goal of this blog is not to advocate for bidding on your brand name (I am assuming you have already reached that conclusion), it is instead intended to assist with squeezing the highest possible value out of every penny spent.

Why Add Negative Keywords

Brand campaigns, despite being highly granular from a keyword perspective, can still produce a disappointingly high number of wasteful clicks. Frequently, those clicks come from people who are seeking employment with your company as opposed to people interested in buying your product. Wasteful clicks also occur when people seek out basic information about your company, its history, its culture and its most prominent employees. In all of these cases it behooves you to avoid spending money - unless, of course, you are the envy of the paid search world and budget is no factor whatsoever to you. The rest of us desire and ravenously utilize as many high-quality negative keywords as possible.

To feed this desire I have created a list of the best negative keywords to apply to your brand campaign in either AdWords or Bing Ads. They can be adequately summarized in three categories: those who are seeking employment with your company, those are who are seeking more information about your employees and those who are seeking more information about your company culture and benefits. Once again, these are not people who are seeking out your product or service, therefore implementing these negative keywords will increase your conversion rate and improve your overall cost per conversion metrics.

Logic regarding your brand name still applies - so if your brand name includes one of the keywords below, please exclude it from your list.

SEEKING INFO ABOUT OFFICE CULTURE/BENEFITS:

Logic regarding your brand name still applies - so if your brand name includes one of the keywords below, please exclude it from your own account.

By implementing this list you are taking yet another step toward preventing wasteful spend - a goal that all business, but especially small budgeted businesses, should always be striving toward. Good luck!

]]>2015-06-19T16:52:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/parallax-rwd-cta-what-does-it-all-mean
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/parallax-rwd-cta-what-does-it-all-mean#When:16:16:00Z
Parallax, RWD, CTA, what does it all mean? We in the web sphere casually drop these words in our day-to-day lives, but those of you who aren’t so familiar with these terms can learn about what these words really mean. So the next time you rub elbows with a hip designer type or a brainy developer, you could very well-impress them and earn some web-street cred by thoughtfully dropping these terms into a conversation or two.

Parallax Scrolling:

Parallax scrolling on the web has been rising since its birth in 2011. It livens up the overall user experience of an otherwise static page. But what is it exactly? Simply put, parallax is a type of effect applied to the speed and movement of background imagery. The background of the website moves at a different speed than the rest of page, thereby mimicking layers of depth on the page.

Benefits of parallax include:

Livens up a webpage with layers of depth and unique animations

Encourages users to scroll through the content to reveal more of these effects

It naturally provides a sense of wonder and curiosity for site viewers

If you’re in the tech field, parallax implementation gives you a one-up against your competitors, as it shows your viewers that you are thinking ahead, employing new ways to stay current in the digital sphere

Be mindful of using these effects however, as too many of these effects on a webpage slows down its load-time considerably.

Responsive Web Design:

You may have heard this phrase before, as the thinking has been around for a while now. Responsive
web design (RWD) is a technique used in web design that aims to provide to site viewers the best viewing experience possible across a wide range of devices. When building out responsive websites, the site is built using a proportion-based grid, flexible images, and media queries via CSS.

Don’t mistake responsive websites with mobile-versions of websites. If you view Facebook on your phone for example, they are employing a mobile-version of their desktop website, with a separate url to boot (see the m.facebook.com?). Responsive websites are different, because when building out the website, the development team only needs to create and maintain one singular website, while in the case of mobile-version websites, like Facebook for example, there are at least two separate websites that need to be maintained for both the desktop version of Facebook and the mobile version. In the end, websites built responsively save clients money, as maintenance of their website is limited to just one, while companies with mobile-version websites are forced to maintain multiple versions of the same website.

CTA:

In
marketing, a call-to-action (CTA) is some type of instruction given to an audience to produce an immediate response. “Buy Now,” “Get Started” or “Request a Demo” are all types of CTAs. In web design, a CTA is typically either a banner, button, or some other kind of click-inducing graphic meant to prompt a user to click it and continue through a conversion process, like signing up for a program or starting a trial of an application.

Good websites present users with a call-to-action. Great websites present users with a CTA they actually click on. The success of a CTA can be measured by calculating the number of clickers over the times the CTA was seen, or through A/B testing, a testing process in which several options of graphics are presented to site visitors. The graphic with the highest success rate (the most clicks) is later chosen as the ideal CTA to use on the website.

CMS:

CMS, or content management system, is a
web application designed to make it easy for non-technical users to create, edit, manage, archive, collaborate on, and store content on web pages. Content includes text, graphics, photos, video, audio, or markup that either gets presented or interacted with the user. Most CMS’s provide capabilities for multiple users with different roles or permission levels to create and manage all or sections of content, data or information of a website.

Above The Fold:

In web design, above the fold refers to the portion of a website that is visible without the need to scroll. Countless times in my career, I’ve heard clients ask, nay, demand the same thing: adding unnecessary fluff above the fold. Somehow, they are scared to think whatever content is below the fold will not be seen by website visitors.

The vast majority of web users are savvy enough to know that content does indeed, live below the fold. A whole subset of websites called the one-page website restrict themselves to scrolling as the only way to navigate through content. If that doesn’t convince you, think about it this way: would you rather browse a website with 80% of its content crammed up at the top of the page, or browse a website that provides a natural rhythm, balance and harmony throughout the page?

White Space:

Though often called “white” space, white space doesn’t have to actually be white. It is the negative space that exists within a layout. White space often includes margins, padding, and spaces either between graphics and text or even spaces between lines of type and letters.

Often times, clients neglect the use of white space. Usually going hand in hand with above-the-fold syndrome, they tend to think that by cramming as much content into a given space as possible, their users will have access to the most amount of information at any given point. Unfortunately, the effect is counter-intuitive. A website crammed full of text or graphics with very little white space has the feeling of being very busy and cluttered. The experience found on these sites is one that is very difficult to absorb content on, with users becoming mentally exhausted and frustrated while trying to decipher the site’s content. Take for example, this
infamous website: need I say more?

If one takes a look at the most compelling websites found today, they will quickly notice the use of white / negative space found on these websites. The use of white / negative spaces gives a feel of elegance and luxury, and provides even more importance to objects surrounded by the empty space around it. Used well, white / negative space is key to any type of composition. If used poorly, however, the layout feels incomplete and out of balance.

Wireframe:

Akin to an architect’s blueprint of a building structure, a wireframe is a visual guide that represents the framework of a website. Think of it as the skeletal structure of a website. The purpose of a wireframe is to keep subjective attributes at bay, such as typography, color, mood, and other visual “noise” that would otherwise skew viewers’ perceptions, while presenting to the user a page’s layout or arrangement of content. Interface elements such as buttons, links, images, and text blocks are included, along with a clear arrangement of a navigational system such as a header, footer, breadcrumbs, and sidebar navigation.

Simply put, a wireframe forces the viewer to focus on what a page does rather than what it looks like.

Landing Page:

We see landing pages everywhere on the web these days, whether we know what they’re called or not. A landing page is a single web page with its main objective to capture leads (such as filling out a contact form, starting a free trial of a product, or registering for a newsletter). A user usually arrives at a landing page after clicking on a banner ad, social media links, email campaigns, or search engine marketing campaigns. Their purpose is to reinforce or enhance the effectiveness of the ad the user clicked on. Landing pages are a great marker for how effective a particular advertisement is. Marketing professionals can analyze the activity generated by the linked URL, such as click-through rates and conversion rates to figure out the success rate of an advertisement.

And there you have it - a rundown of some popular, yet important terms found on the web-sphere. Impress your web-savvy colleagues during your next meeting or simply read up on these phrases to get a better understanding of this craft.

]]>2015-06-11T16:16:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/the-art-of-web-learning
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/the-art-of-web-learning#When:17:25:00Z
When it comes to web design and its constantly changing landscape of formats, tools and procedures, the one thing that is paramount to staying in the game is to know HOW to stay in the game. The great advantage offered to us is that the source of our knowledge is no longer tied to a classroom in a building but is freely (or for a minimal fee) available to us using the very platform that we build upon.

Cue the “duh”.

A Journey

My personal journey which is shared by many in the full-time developer world is that my foray into web development didn’t happen in a classroom. For me it came out of a curiosity, which is one of the greatest traits a good web developer must have. I was working in the IT department of a law firm and the idea was proposed to have an intranet website built to replace the good ol’ employee handbook. With little to no previous experience in web development, I stuck out my neck and volunteered. Why? I was curious as to how I could make it work and the notion of learning something new didn’t scare me.

You could call it curiosity with a side dose of “can-do”.

And by “can-do” I’m referring to that sense that no matter how complex or formidable a new challenge may appear…you are able to approach it with a sense that although you may not know how it works now, as long as it is
knowable, you have a confidence that you will figure it out.

Curiosity and can-do. If you have those two traits, you have a great head start. If you’re a newbie in web development or have already gotten your feet wet but feel that proverbial wall or ceiling and feel trapped…break it and get back to
curiosity and can-do.

Now, with those two traits locked in your brain, it’s good to have a plan.

Have A Plan

I maintain a list that I make sure to review once a week and it has served me well to keep my abilities sharp and getting sharper. The one cautionary note with lists (at least for me) is that the longer the list, the less motivation I feel to even look at it, let alone actually do anything with it. So I try to keep my lists concise and I’ll frequently remove less important items to add others rather than just add more. Do what works best for you.

So, take a look at the current trends and note certain technologies you need to either start learning or need to expand your knowledge in. I like my lists to have priorities so you can either sort them in ascending order of importance or use a numbering system.

Put your list somewhere you can review on a regular basis. I use a combination of OmniFocus [
https://www.omnigroup.com/omnifocus ] and Evernote [https://evernote.com ] to collect and organize this list. Block out time in your weekly calendar reserved purely for learning time. Small chunks are better than no chunks. Large unrealistic chunks are just as bad as no chunks. Make it routine and make it entirely doable.

To start (or continue), here are some of my go-to’s for learning, exploring and encountering new technologies and ideas that spark my curiosity for learning.

Treehouse [http://teamtreehouse.com ] - This one involves that minimal fee reference I made earlier. This site is worth every penny (there are a few pennies involved…but pennies well spent).

CSS-Tricks [https://css-tricks.com/ ] - so many good little snippets of knowledge to spur exploration of larger topics.

Stack Overflow [http://stackoverflow.com ] - a go-to resource for coding assistance is also an excellent source for learning about new/missing abilities in your own web development repertoire.

So many can-do’s out there. The challenge is pairing them down to manageable bits and getting started. Find your bit and dig in.

]]>2015-06-04T17:25:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/getting-things-done-when-theres-too-much-to-do
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/getting-things-done-when-theres-too-much-to-do#When:16:32:00Z
We've been increasingly busier at GRAYBOX over the past few months and I'm learning every day that managing projects and my work habits is a necessity as our workload increases. Here are some things I've learned about producing quality while balancing multiple projects.

Focus

One of the biggest concerns I have when juggling multiple projects is quality control. It's sometimes difficult to make sure I'm putting out my very best work when I have several projects battling for my attention. To solve this problem, I typically plan my week, dedicating days or large chunks of time to each project. This helps me get my brain in the mood to think about the project, and once I'm 'in the zone' I can bust through a large amount of work in a small amount of time, without having to switch back and forth and get distracted. I also know that once my brain is fully focused on a particular project, and its goals, that my work is going to be higher quality. This method also psychologically makes me feel better, as my brain only has to focus on 1 project as opposed to 3 or 4. I don't
feel like I'm overbooked and burnt out mentally after just a few weeks.

Change It Up

Sometimes I can't devote an entire day to a particular project, so I'll have to break my day into chunks to get several tasks done on time. I find it's sometimes difficult to reset my brain when switching from one project to another. To remedy this, I'll take small breaks in between tasks, simply to 'cleanse the palette'. I'll get up and take a break, look at Facebook or Reddit for a couple of minutes, or go have a quick chat with someone before digging into my next task. This helps me stop thinking about the project I was working on and gets my brain in the right space to move on.

Communicate Often

Sometimes even when working to the best of our abilities, a deadline just isn't going to get met. Communicating with clients and your project team early and often can help ease the stress of a possible deadline pushback. Deadlines are a method of planning, and if there's time to rearrange the project schedule, a client or co-worker will typically be happy to do so. The important thing to remember is not to put others in a bad situation by keeping them out of the loop. If they're a part of the process, they'll be much happier in the end, as they'll have the ability to rearrange their plans accordingly.

Realize You Are Not Super-Human

Sometimes there just isn't enough time in the day to get everything done, but it does
need to get done on time. In those cases, I find it's best to take an inventory of open tasks, and decide which are easiest to hand off to others. The 'perfectionist' in me is terrified of letting others take over, but I know in my heart that if I'm overbooked, none of the work I do will be satisfactory. Handing off to others ensures the work will get done with more care and detail than I can give.

]]>2015-06-02T16:32:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/automating-css-changes-with-expressionengine
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/automating-css-changes-with-expressionengine#When:19:11:00ZWith a bit of SCSS, ExpressionEngine and a color picker field type, we gave our client the ability to update CSS throughout the site.

Our client has a fairly normal request: give each of our departments a unique color palette, while keeping the design integrity in-tact - AND - if we add new departments in the future, we want to be able to add those, with their custom colors too. We explored a couple of options, including writing some CSS overrides inline and building a custom CSS snippet they could edit for each department. These options forced the client to manage a lot of code, and gave the potential for significant breakage in their design if they did it wrong.

What if we gave the client a few color picker fields to customize the palette, and the system rebuilt the CSS after the record was saved? That would be slick, safe, and immensely helpful to our client who only wants to make a few tweaks and not learn a whole new set of rules for how to manage CSS on their site.

What did we add:

Use the pages module to generate pages of the site

Add a color picker field type to the channel used by the page

Create a custom module to update the CSS from a SCSS definition file (this module includes an SCSS php compiler from https://github.com/leafo/scssphp/) when the Channel Entry Submission End hook is called.

Load the custom CSS in the page template

Pages Module

You could use Structure, Native Layouts or the classic Templates approach, but whatever path you choose, you'll need to store the custom color data in a channel entry and listen for the field to be updated in order to regenerate the custom CSS.

Color Picker

There are a few out there that will work fine. We went with Color Picker Plus (https://devot-ee.com/add-ons/color-picker-plus) to have the flexibility to define a custom palette for the customer if they ever wanted that. At the time of this writing, it's only $14.50, if that's too rich for your bones, take a look at the Noah Kuhn's free Color Picker field type. In the end, you need to end up with a hex value in the field content.

Custom module to update the CSS from the SCSS definition file.

This is where the magic happens. Build a simple extension to listen for the "Channel Entry Submission End" developer hook. When the right entry is being saved, load the color from the entry, load the SCSS file, compile it using the https://github.com/leafo/scssphp/ library with the CSS destination... and clear your cache because the work is done. We included a couple of ExpressionEngine fields in the SCSS file, which are swapped out in the extension prior to compilation. If there is no color set in the channel entry, we fall back to the corporate colors.

Update your paths, and you're all set to go! The client can update the CSS with whatever field content you select in your channel entry, giving them the freedom and the safety of not being able to easily break their design.

Happy Coding Friends!

]]>2015-05-28T19:11:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/mobilegeddon-and-the-aftermath
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/mobilegeddon-and-the-aftermath#When:16:41:00Z
Just recently,
Google changed their ranking algorithm for mobile search results. For users who access Google on their mobile devices, websites passing Google’s mobile-friendly test will be nudged towards the top of the search results, while non-mobile friendly webpages are left in the dust.

What does that mean for businesses who have a space in the web sphere? Now, more than ever, is the time to start thinking about shifting towards a mobile-friendly mindset, if you haven’t done so already.

Among the options that are available to you, the two most popular are:

Creating a separate mobile-friendly version of the website, with its own dedicated URL, separate from the desktop experience (m.company.com for example).

Upfront, the less costly option is to create a new and separate mobile-version of a website. However, updates and general maintenance to the website now doubles in work, as web admins will have to manage both the desktop and mobile experiences, thereby increasing the cost of future updates and maintenance. There is also an issue with maintaining correct cross-links. If the desktop version of the homepage links to an About page, the URL will be different for the same page on the mobile-friendly website. The web admin will need to direct traffic to both the desktop version’s URL and also the mobile version.

Everyone here at GRAYBOX recommends building a responsive website. The initial cost of rebuilding a website from the ground-up may seem like a daunting task, but the ease of maintenance down the road is significantly greater than maintaining two websites like in the option above.

Below is a list of some key points to keep in mind while designing for a mobile-friendly website (responsive or otherwise):

Be mindful of touch targets on buttons & links

Have you ever tried tapping on a 20x20px button on your phone, only to be taken to another page entirely because your too-big-of-a-finger accidentally tapped the button next to the one you intended instead? Save the usability gripes from your users and ensure a minimum touch target size of at least 44-50px high x wide.

Choose a typeface and font size that reads well

Got a magnifying glass handy? No? Neither do your users. While some websites allow pinching/zooming into content to increase the text size, why not save time and your users’ patience by simply bumping up the text size so readers can easily consume your content. If you’re worried about content living below the fold, rest-assured that users do indeed scroll to read below-the-fold content (Facebook, Instagram, and all of the other social-sharing based apps / platforms have trained users’ brains to scroll down for more content).

Get rid of Flash on your website

If you’re still using Flash on your website, then get ready to part ways when designing for a mobile experience. If you’re using an iPhone, you already know that Flash will not be recognized when browsing page content. It is also very heavy to load and takes a toll on bandwidth. Because of this, Flash and other inaccessible content will negatively impact rankings on the search engine.

Streamline your content

Along with doing away with Flash, trendy design effects like video backgrounds or parallax scrolling will need to be heavily pared down on mobile experiences. Again, these elements consume massive amounts of data and also bog down the load time of your website, especially if users are not connected to wi-fi or another reliable connection.

What do you do if you aren’t ready for a full re-design of your website?
Since the new algorithm will be applied on a page-by-page level rather than site-wide, you could potentially get away with optimizing only certain pages of your website for the time being. Focus on commonly visited pages like the homepage or contact page to have at least a couple of pages positively-impacted by the algorithm. Still, this is only a temporary solution until you get a chance to switch over to a website utilizing responsive web design (RWD).

Are you prepared for Mobilegeddon?

]]>2015-05-13T16:41:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/five-strategies-to-increase-adwords-conversions
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/five-strategies-to-increase-adwords-conversions#When:15:02:00Z
The holy grail of AdWords is transforming dollars spent into dollars earned, which only occurs (if ever) via skillful and strategic management of countless operations simultaneously. In such a complex vortex of moving parts it is easy to overlook areas of opportunity that can assist in transforming your AdWords account into a printing press for positive ROI.

Here are five strategies to increase AdWords conversions:

Reduce your bids. At face value this strategy sounds counterintuitive. However, in cases where you easily exhaust your daily budgets, strategically reducing bids produces more total clicks for the same amount of daily spend while also allowing ads to run for longer periods of time throughout the day. Assuming your conversion rate is predictable and stable, this strategy is especially effective at immediately increasing conversions. Keep in mind, however, that this is only effective in cases where your budgets exhaust or max out their daily budget caps. I wrote about this strategy at great length in my previous blog.

Improve your landing pages. Too obvious, right? Stunningly, this aspect of AdWords is frequently overlooked. Within the trenches of AdWords only half of your battle is simply acquiring the click. The other half is entirely dependent upon what is accomplished after the click, which far too often involves sending visitors to homepages or under-optimized landing pages. A tight correlation should exist between the keyword being searched, the ad being served, and the landing page being utilized after the click. Every landing page should be tailored very specifically to its corresponding keywords, which can be accomplished by duplicating a successful landing page and keyword swapping where appropriate. This practice, though looked down upon by Google from an SEO perspective, is an effective paid search strategy. However, you should be mindful to purposefully block these “keyword swap” landing pages from being crawled via your robots.txt file.

Check your keyword query reports. If you utilize any type of broad match keyword targeting, including broad match targeting with modifiers, it is absolutely essential that you monitor your keyword query report (located within the keywords tab underneath details >> all). The report allows you to see what keywords have been entered into Google that actually triggered clicks. By monitoring this particular section you can weed out unnecessary or unwanted clicks by adding them to your negative keywords list. Gradually, as your negative keyword list grows, the quality of your click-triggering queries will improve, which inevitably will increase your total conversions.

Check your settings. Google is sneaky and often buries important settings that affect your traffic quality. A perfect example is located under “location options (advanced)” tab where the default setting targets the following: “people in, searching for, or who show interest in my targeted location.” The latter part of that statement is especially alarming. By targeting “people who show interest in my targeted location” you are essentially trusting Google to display your ads to anyone in the country (and potentially around the world) assuming that person has ever expressed a passive interest in your location. How Google determines this remains mysterious, though the outcome is not good. Check your Analytics and you will most likely encounter stray clicks coming from different cities, states and perhaps different countries around the world. Depending on your business, these clicks could very likely be wasteful. It is recommended that you change your settings to “people in my targeted location” and that you elect to exclude “people in my excluded locations” as well.

Adjust your bid multipliers. It is often beneficial to bid down or bid up within certain locations and with certain devices. For example, a technology company in Portland might be targeting the entire state of Oregon but receives higher quality leads from Portland. By adding a bid multiplier of +10% to all queries being conducted within Portland city limits, you can give yourself more exposure (and theoretically generate more clicks) in an area that actually produces conversions for you. Similarly, bids can be reduced. A perfect example is a website that fails to generate any conversions on mobile devices, in which case a -100% bid could be placed for mobile searches, thereby eliminating all mobile traffic.

By implementing a combination of these strategies you can eliminate wasteful spending overnight and consequently improve your total conversions as well as your cost per conversions. Good luck!

]]>2015-04-23T15:02:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/developing-child-themes-with-canvas-for-wordpress
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/developing-child-themes-with-canvas-for-wordpress#When:17:03:00Z
When developing in
WordPress there are many different ways to accomplish the functionality and design that you are looking for. With the ability of having many ways to accomplish the goal there also comes many unreliable ways that just may not be able to stand the test of time. By this, I mean, they may not have the ability to be upgraded or allow other plugins as well as the core of WordPress to not be able to be updated. Updates most often are looked at as unnecessary code changes, however, this is not always the case. Often, updates are not always cosmetic changes to a feature but a change in the codes functionality in order to increase or correct security issues.

Enter Woo

With there being many WordPress solutions the key is to finding a
solid solution that is durable, can be upgraded, is scalable, and don’t forget stylish. WooThemes has come up with WooCanvas that provides durability, expandability, and can be styled any way you want. In order to take full advantage of Canvas as a developer you can create a "child theme"for you or your clients WordPress website. The Woo Canvas system supports Woo Commerce to maximize all the e-commerce features that WooCommerce has to offer.

Using the Woo Canvas base and creating a child theme allows the core WordPress framework to be updated without having to worry about it overwriting any code changes. Woo Commerce and any plugins used also have the advantage of being able to be updated without the concern of overwriting and knocking out any code that is currently in place. Not only does Woo Canvas protect the code, but it also protects the framework and base design so that it is fully responsive and customizable on almost every level. What cannot be done out of the box can done in the child theme code.

The base concept for using a Woo Canvas theme is to have the Woo Canvas Theme in the themes folder of your WordPress project and then create a new folder in the themes folder that will contain the "child theme."The child theme runs off of a base theme inheriting all that themes styling abilities and functionality and then extending off those. Thus, creating a stand-alone instance of custom styling, templates and functions. Having the integrity of the code remain intact and protected is the biggest advantage to using Woo Canvas for your WordPress project.

Structure

Now that we know why we should be using Woo Canvas, lets go over the Woo Canvas structure in more detail. As mentioned earlier, when using Woo Canvas, the product being developed will be a "child theme."To initially declare and be able to call a child theme via the WordPress theme selection, we need to create a new folder to hold our child theme. Start by creating a style.css file in the root of the new child theme folder. The style.css file will contain the code snippet below, which declares the theme, the theme dependency (the parent to the child theme), and where to find the additional styling for the custom child theme.

The code snippet above can be left alone or you can do an import call to your child theme’s css just below the import of the parent canvas theme css. Another way of including the child theme’s css can be to call it through a function through the functions.php file.

Again, the main focus of using a child theme is to house and contain all the themes templates, styling and non-plugin functionality within the child theme folder in the themes folder.

Within the child themes folder the main files you will initially want to focus on is your child themes CSS style sheet, functions.php and your page templates (e.g. template-homepage.php). You can also put into your child theme folder any of the parent theme’s (and WordPress’) regular template files such as 404.php, header.php, footer.php, etc. After creating a copy of the original template file into the child theme folder you can then modify the files to your desire and when the website renders as long as you have your child theme activated those template files will over right any standard or parent theme versions of those files, thus protecting the original WordPress and Canvas theme structure and code base.

There is extreme power and the strong promotion of consistency by using and developing a Canvas child theme. An extremely powerful file of the child theme will be the functions.php file within the child theme folder. As mentioned above, you can write functions in that file that can use the native WordPress style sheet import call, however, this is just the beginning of the what can be done in the functions.php file. The functions.php file can also be used to set the default styling options of the child theme. It does this by declaring the values in the child functions.php file that will then set the default styling options that are in the parent template. You can re-write and modify current functions in place, as well as, create your own custom functions.

Within this functions.php file you can also import additional Google fonts to be selected from the drop down menus. However, Woo Commerce makes a plugin that can easily do this for you without having to import each individual additional font via the functions.php file.

The Child Template

Now that we have discussed the styling and the functionality calls via the functions.php file we can move towards the templates we are going to be creating for the child theme. To declare a new template, select from the page type drop down in the WordPress Pages by simply creating a file in the child theme’s root folder that starts with "template-" (e.g. template-homepage.php). This will create or override the current WordPress template and will use the code that you have in your template file in the child themes root folder.

Woo Canvas comes with a set of standard templates out of the box for magazine, portfolio, sitemap, timeline, widgets, archives, contact, homepage, and image gallery. These in-place templates can easily be copied to the child theme folder and customized from there.

In order to let WordPress initialize the template and make it available, you will need to include a variation of the code snippet below at the top of your child theme template.

As a quick recap, we have covered child theme styling, functions and templates. Another important component to developing a child theme is the out-of-the-box plugins that Woo Canvas comes with. The best practice in usage of the included plugins is to use the functionality that plugin provides out-of-the-box and then create your own styling within the CSS of the child theme. In some cases, you may need to add your custom styling under a class you can add through the WordPress admin panel when setting up the plugin or make the styling of the plugin be dependent on the template file chosen. This preserves the integrity of the plugin and enables the plugin to be updated in the future without destroying any changes and no disruption in plugin functionality.

The powerful plugins that are included out-of-the-box with Woo Child Canvas are:

WooCommerce

Woo-Projects

Woo-Team

Woo-Features

Woo-Testimonials

Woo-Archives

Above are the most commonly used Woo Canvas Plugins that all offer their own powerful functionality for your Child Theme project. In addition to the above listed, Woo has many other free and paid plugins to accomplish your desired goal. A few of the powerful additional plugins available are:

Woo-Dojo - Free

Woo-Slider – Paid

Woo-Sensei - Paid

Woo-Sidebars – Free

Woo-Abandoned Card – Free and Paid

Woo-Colors – Free

Woo-Icons – Free

Woo-Follow-up-emails – Free and Paid

Woo-Bookings – Free

Woo-PayPal – Free and Paid

Through the use of plugins, the ability to create protected custom styling, ability to create custom functionality, ability to build custom templates all while maintaining 100% WordPress, 100% WooCommerce, and 100% WooCanvas code integrity is reason enough to start using the Woo Canvas Child Theme system. The trend in WordPress has been to modify the code to be desired, changing the integrity of the code, and in many cases not allowing further upgrades as it will destroy the custom code in place. This is not the case with Woo Canvas child themes, they are made to be solid with WordPress in mind.

In Conclusion

Above I have outlined all the tools and initial path to getting started on creating your child theme but there is a few small little touches that should not be forgotten when finishing up your theme. You can include a screenshot.png in the root folder of your child theme to give your theme the thumbnail you see when you activate your theme via the WordPress admin panel. Lastly, do not forget your favicon.ico! Drop your favicon file into the root folder of your child theme and it will now render.

As you can see the main focus of a child theme is the contain the custom theme functions, templates, styling, and assets in a single central location that is protected from the WordPress code, as well as, protecting the WordPress code.

]]>2015-04-20T17:03:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/click-through-rate-ctr-most-overvalued-adwords-kpi
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/click-through-rate-ctr-most-overvalued-adwords-kpi#When:15:54:00Z
Google AdWords contains a complex vortex of data that is very often underutilized and misinterpreted. The nuances that exist within every account are varied and numerous, and therefore less experienced marketers tend to fixate upon key performance indicators (KPIs) that are easy to understand as opposed to being exceptionally valuable.

The greatest offender in this regard is the click through rate (CTR). Click through rate has long been trumpeted by inexperienced marketers as a high-level indicator of success for campaigns, ad groups, ads, keywords, and even entire accounts as a whole. In reality, CTR forms a negligible piece of the overall performance puzzle and is one of the easiest KPIs to artificially manipulate upward or downward.

The latter part of that statement confuses some marketers. Why would anybody purposefully manipulate their CTR downward? Interestingly there is one common scenario where it actually benefits marketers to reduce their click through rates, thereby causing a chain reaction that simultaneously improves nearly every other important KPI. Let’s take a look at this common scenario.

Initial Scenario:

Let’s imagine you have an AdWords campaign with a $100 daily budget. The CTR of this imaginary campaign stands at 5%, its average position is 1.5, and its average cost per click is $3.33 - therefore providing 33 total clicks per day. You convert 10% of your clicks into conversions for an average of 3.3 conversions per day. However, the campaign exists within a highly competitive vertical and generally exhausts its full $100 budget by 2:00 pm every day. This is not ideal, however additional advertising funds are simply not available to you. You are stuck with $100.

What should you do?

The most savvy option is to strategically lower your bids, consequently reducing your click through rate. The benefits of this maneuver are numerous. By lowering your bids (thereby reducing CTR) you simultaneously generate more total clicks, more total conversions and a lower average cost per click. Let's take a deeper look into this optimized scenario.

Optimized Scenario:

A chain reaction of events occurs when reducing your bids. First, the average position falls from 1.5 to 2.5. Expectedly, the click through rate then sinks from 5% to 3%. However, because bids have been reduced, the average cost per click falls from $3.33 to $2.50. Now, instead of producing 33 clicks per day, the same campaign produces 40 clicks per day. This consequently elevates average conversions from 3.3 per day to 4.0.

CTR is down, but the most important metrics (like conversions) are up. This is a trade nearly every AdWords professional would gladly make.

To summarize, the daily $100 spent remained exactly the same, but under the optimized scenario with reduced bids and reduced CTRs it consistently received more clicks and more conversions per day. Ask any marketer about their ultimate reason for advertising within AdWords and they will likely reply that it is to produce conversions or actionable goals. Their ultimate reason for being involved in AdWords has absolutely nothing to do with achieving certain CTR milestones. Therefore, the second scenario is a much better and much more efficiently optimized AdWords campaign despite having a drastically lower CTR.

It should be noted that this strategy only works (and works very well!) when operating within the confines of a campaign that consistently exhausts its daily budget. When applied to a campaign that fails to spend its daily allotment, the result is simply fewer clicks. Also, it is important to be strategic when lowering bids. While theoretically dropping from an average position of 1.5 to 2.5 still provides your ads with adequate visibility, it would not behoove a marketer to slash bids to the point where the average position falls from 1.5 to 5.5.

This not to say that CTR has no value whatsoever. It is especially useful for evaluating the quality of two ads side by side within the same ad group. However, at the high-level account view, it is by far the most frequently misunderstood KPI and should be readily sacrificed in order to improve more valuable metrics like total clicks and conversions.

]]>2015-04-16T15:54:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/expressionengine-content-management-with-better-pages
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/expressionengine-content-management-with-better-pages#When:15:49:00Z
ExpressionEngine is a solid application framework with a surprising weakness... it's a bit too flexible. Try and do the simple task of Content Management and you'll be left scratching your head with a series of questions boiling down to "what is the best approach?" Structure, built by Travis Schmeisser, has been a solid go-to module for years. Structure's interface for clients is great, but the tendency of Structure to take over the URL interpreter and the lackluster navigation support make full adoption challenging. The built-in Pages module is simplistic, but trying to manage multiple page types without a crazy number of channels and channel fields keep it from shining through as a true winner. I love NavEE, so if there's a way to get the Pages module and the NavEE module to work well together without having to create a bunch of new templates, that would be fantastic.

Enter "Better Pages", an under-appreciated field type. With Better Pages, the client selects the page template from their graphical icon representation. When the selection is made, only the fields associated with that template will be shown on the form...the others will either collapse or hide (depending on your configuration).

The new workflow:

Use a single channel to cover all of your page types

Assign each template in the "Better Pages" module

Configure which fields apply to each template

...profit!

With the NavEE field type installed, you can even create the navigation bar on the fly without jumping back and forth from the page management and the NavEE panel (although I personally prefer to build out the pages first, then go into the NavEE module and update the nav bars by dragging and dropping the links to match our sitemap plan).

There are other options out there to show and hide fields based on the Entry Type, but the inclusion of Better Page's thumbnails brings our client's experience up to the next level and is well worth the $15.

]]>2015-04-07T15:49:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/making-svg-icons
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/making-svg-icons#When:16:18:00ZScalable Vector Graphics (SVG) allow you to make images out of code. At least, that’s my definition in a nutshell. The most accurate description is that they are an XML-based vector image format and officially part of the SVG specification from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) since 1999.

Why SVGs?

As a
front-end developer, one of the great opportunities that the SVG offers is a break from the traditional use of pixel-based (rasterized) images to a format that behaves like a pure vector image file because...well, it is. The SVG format allows you to add images that are built using XML language to draw with coordinates rather than pixels.

There are three advantages to using SVGs

Responsive Design - the scaling of SVGs is infinite and sharp at any size.

Retina/High-Resolution Displays - since these images are built with code rather than pixels, the image retains its sharpness at any size.

CSS image manipulation - when using the inline variation of the SVG file, you have access to things like fill color and size...giving you control over the display of the image via your stylesheets.

Before I hail the SVG as the great PNG/JPG/GIF killer - let me first say that it’s not. Like the other formats, each has its own place in web design depending on the intended use and purpose of the image(s) you are working with.

So, without further ado, let me walk you through how I create and implement SVG files into our designs here at GRAYBOX. For this example, I’m going to target simple vector-based images that use a single color and, in this scenario, will be used as icons on the website. My goal is an SVG image that has no preset fill colors and a class of “icon”, which I will then be able to manipulate in my stylesheets to set sizes and hover states.

Open/create the file in Illustrator (there are other applications that can accomplish this as well).

Fit the image to your Artboard. The more exact the better because it will export any extra spacing you may have on your artboard between the edges and the actual image. I prefer to match the width and height of the artboard to the EXACT dimensions of my images.

Hit “Save As” and save it as an SVG file. Use the defaults given (SVG 1.1).

With the application open, drag the SVG file you created onto the svgo-ui application window. The application will immediately optimize your SVG file removing a lot of the extra junk code Illustrator added to your file making it a smaller file. Less bloat is a great thing.

Class-ifize your SVG. This is where we make your single-color image adjustable from your stylesheet (if your image has more than one color - you can skip this step).

Find any “fill: #xxxxx” references and delete them. Since we’re going to control colors from the CSS/SCSS files, we don’t want this setting used in the XML/SVG file.

Locate the code block that starts with “path” and add a class to the path(s) by simply adding...

class=”icon”<br>

Example:

path class=”icon” ...

Save the file

Next, you have two options. You can either (1) add the image into your site using the standard <img src='path-to-your-image.svg'> OR, (2) to get access to the now-accessible “icon” class, you can insert the code inline. You can either copy/paste the code in directly or add an include reference such as...

<?php include(‘path-to-image.svg’); ?>

Style the SVG file in your stylesheets. (Assuming you went with option 2 above).

Compatibility and Fallbacks

For those wondering about compatibility,
click here for the current state of the SVG and how well it works on all the major browsers/devices. As you’ll see in the chart, the adoption/compatibility of SVG is vast and certainly worth including it in your development.

What about those older browsers? I’m looking at you IE 8 and earlier. If you need to account for older browsers that don’t support SVG, there are some fallback solutions. The most common one is
svgeezy and is simple javascript plugin that will force older browsers to swap out svg’s with other compatible image files.

]]>2015-03-24T16:18:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/supercalifragilistic-list-2875-online-marketing-tips-tricks-tools
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/supercalifragilistic-list-2875-online-marketing-tips-tricks-tools#When:14:40:00Z
Are you looking for ways to dominate your internet marketing? You've probably come across lists of top tips, tricks or tools while researching ideas. Well, this is the list to end all lists; a compilation of the best of the best. Here are 2875 tips, tricks, and more spread across the online marketing disciplines to help you do just that. These are compiled from some of the top internet marketing companies today: Moz, Authority Labs, WordStream, Buffer, Raven Tools, and more. And even a couple of these are hot off the presses from SearchFest last Friday. Enjoy.

And Finally...

There they are: 2875 marketing tips, tricks, tools and everything in between you may need to crush it online for your business. Were any top shelf lists missed? Let us know on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+

I’ve used excellent software like WAMP and MAMP in my local development environment for years. These tools are simple to setup, easy to use, and are excellent for personal programming; but issues arise when you use a distributed development workflow, deploy to servers, or have to cope with operating system level library requirements. And let’s not forget those acronyms leave out some important players like postgres, nginx, or rails!

What is Vagrant?

So what is Vagrant then? I’ll let Mitchell Hashimoto and the good people at Hashicorp explain: “Vagrant provides easy to configure, reproducible, and portable work environments with an easy-to-use workflow and focus on automation.”

I consider Vagrant as the pilot for my virtual machines. But for a typical developer, Vagrant ends up being just a few configuration files that you store in your codebase or repository that allows anyone, using almost any operating system, to use the exact same environment for your programming, however, the Vagrant configuration files don’t affect anything if your peers still want to use a different LAMP solution.

But It Works for Me!

No longer do you need to fully document or communicate all the details of your application configuration. Like what version of PHP should you use? Which extensions are required? What image libraries do I need to brew install? Get the idea? Vagrant makes the "it works on my machine" comment a thing of the past.

The 10 Minute Trial

Vagrant is powerful, and like many technologies, it can be fairly straightforward to use or very complex with endless options if you wish. So, we’ll just perform a simple server setup and I’ll show you where to go next. Also, keep in mind, the initial setup is the true overhead here. Once you’ve installed the prerequisites, spinning up environments is fast and trivial.

Install the Prerequisites

You need to install two pieces of software on your system: a virtualization provider (we’ll use VirtualBox, but there are others) and Vagrant. For now, install the following:

Initialize

Let’s create a directory on your Desktop to keep our Vagrant test in. And yes, Vagrant is run from the terminal/command line so open up your console and follow these steps:

Using Windows?

$ mkdir %userprofile%/desktop/test

$ cd %userprofile%/desktop/test

Not Windows:

$ mkdir ~/Desktop/test

$ cd ~/Desktop/test

Remember, Vagrant is just the pilot for your virtual machine, so you’ll need to tell it what operating system to use for your environment. Vagrant calls this the “box”. We’ll use a 32-bit Ubuntu box for our test, but you can peruse the other boxes at the Vagrant Box Catalog.

To create a standard configuration file for your Vagrant project, you initialize it with `init` followed by the base box you wish to use.

$ vagrant init hashicorp/precise32

Vagrant Up!

The vagrant init command creates a configuration file named Vagrantfile, that Vagrant will look for each time you start your virtual environment. The Vagrantfile is the foundation of your vagrant box. This is where you set ports, adjust memory, or call scripts to install custom software when the system boots. For now, let’s just start the server, which in this case will also provision the server (or download it from the Internet). The following command may take a few minutes depending on your Internet speed:

$ vagrant up

Once this command has finished, you’ll have a fully functional 32-bit Ubuntu server running in an virtual environment. This server shares a folder with your workstation. Let’s connect to your server, check the shared directory, then throw it away. You connect to your virtual server over a local ssh tunnel like so:

$ vagrant ssh

You are now logged into your virtual server. Your prompt should have changed to something like this:

vagrant@vagrant-ubuntu-precise-32:~$

Change to the vagrant shared directory and list out the contents:

$ cd /vagrant/

$ ls

See your Vagrantfile? It’s the same file in your Desktop/test directory. If this was a project, you’d place your codebase in there and be able to edit locally on your workstation while seeing the updates from your server. Ok, let’s stop the server by first exiting your ssh tunnel and halting:

vagrant@vagrant-ubuntu-precise-32:~$ exit

$ vagrant halt

That’s the short tour! To wrap up, if you want to get rid of the server (which takes up space on your workstation), type the following:

$ vagrant destroy

Where to go from Here?

All we did was start a server and turn it off - big deal. What you really wanted was a replacement for LAMP right? There are endless pre made systems ready for you to use like the Laravel Homestead box or the Scotch Box. Once you start using Vagrant for your development environment, I doubt you’ll go back to your MAMP setup anytime soon.

Happy coding!

]]>2015-02-25T18:47:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/business-operations-service-offerings
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/business-operations-service-offerings#When:18:22:00Z
Your company has just built an amazing new website: Site visitors convert at a high rate; your lead volume has increased 250% per day; your online marketing efforts are driving more quality traffic because people are able to easily find you and your products. By all accounts your project has been a huge success. But your newfound success has exacerbated existing (or created new) problems:

How do we track these new leads to make sure our sales team consistently follows-up, and track the results of those interactions from opportunity to sale?

How do we efficiently process orders from our website, and ensure our fulfillments happen quickly and accurately?

How do we ensure we have inventory available to meet our current needs, and know when it's time to restock to meet future needs?

How do we account for and report on the financial side of this newfound success?

How do we consolidate all of this new information so that we can understand how and why our business is growing, uncover any shortcomings, and proactively plan for the future?

As businesses evolve over time, so to do their process and system requirements. What worked for a one-person startup no longer works when the sales team has five people. Fulfilling orders out of a garage doesn't scale to a warehouse with shelves, bins, and hundreds of packages a day. Understanding and solving these problems is a keystone for business growth.

GRAYBOX has traditionally been a business partner for the side of your business you present to the world. We've helped to ensure people can find you online through effective marketing, that your brand and image are presented consistently, that customers have an excellent experience on your website, and that your site converts at a high level and results in the greatest number of quality leads and transactions.

It's a natural fit, then, that GRAYBOX also be your trusted partner for everything that happens behind the scenes with your business. We leverage our experience in back office systems, processes, and best practices, and help make your business more efficient and solve the challenging problems that otherwise block further business growth.

Our focus with these Business Operations consulting services is primarily focused in six areas:

Order Fulfillment: Your website either generates orders directly or generates leads that result in orders. GRAYBOX helps clients put in place processes and systems to track and fulfill those orders.

Accounting Systems: Order and inventory data only tells part of the story of your business; having quality accounting systems in place is a key component of managing your business and bridges the gaps of other systems.

Inventory Management: GRAYBOX works with clients to implement processes and systems to know more than just how many widgets you have, but to understand turn, velocity, profitability, and forecasting for inventory.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM): Understanding more than just who your customers are, but how they interact with your company, their buying preferences, and being able to serve them better.

System Integration: GRAYBOX has spent years integrating website data to CRM, Accounting, Order Management, and Inventory systems, ensuring your data flows seamlessly from point A to point B, and eliminates manual data entry and human error.

Business Reporting and Intelligence: With eyes on the big picture, GRAYBOX helps businesses sift through the noise and pull out insightful, relevant, and timely information from your data.

Whether your business is a startup, in growth mode, or mature and looking to optimize, GRAYBOX can step behind the curtain to help, applying the same consultative approach to your back office processes and systems as our clients have come to expect from our website and marketing services.

Bower is the self proclaimed
Package Manager for the Web. You know it’s cool because it’s built by Twitter and it uses an IO domain, but let me try to convince you further.

Let’s say you’re building your web application and you need
jQuery and Bootstrap. What do you do to get those packages? If you’re like me, you fire up your browser and hunt down the latest version of both libraries, download them, extract them, and rifle through your filesystem to copy/paste/move what you need to where you need it.

Not anymore.

With Bower, you type a simple command:
bower install <package>, and Bower does all the work of finding the latest (or specific) version of the requested packages and retrieves them for your application. Once you have a Bower configuration file established, upgrading, downgrading, or moving your assets is simple.

Another thing I like about Bower is that it’s not invasive. You can drop it in your existing application today and just use it for the packages you want to without fear of it affecting your existing libraries.

5 Minute Trial

Install the Prerequisites

Bower is a
Node.js package, so you need Node.js installed first if you don’t already have it. To install Node.js, visit http://nodejs.org/ and follow the installation instructions.

Once Node.js is installed, you install Bower (globally to your system or server) by typing:

npm install -g bower

That’s all it takes to install Bower and now the
bower command is available in your terminal. Note that the bower command manages packages contextually, so you need to navigate into your target directory in your terminal first, like you would if you were using say git from a command line. Ok, so now let’s create a directory on your system’s desktop called /test/ to perform some real Bower testing, then navigate into it so we can start:

If you’re Using Windows:

mkdir %userprofile%/desktop/test
cd %userprofile%/desktop/test

If you’re not using Windows:

mkdir ~/Desktop/test
cd ~/Desktop/test

Retrieve your first Package

Once you have created and navigated into your target directory, you can simply install any available package using the defaults. Retrieve the current release of jQuery with this command:

bower install jquery

Now take a look at the contents of your test folder. In it you see a directory named something similar to
bower_components with the entire jQuery library in test/jquery/dist. That was simple, right?

Create a Configuration File

Ok, let’s be more specific and tell bower we want to add a specific version Bootstrap and
FontAwesome by setting up a configuration file. A configuration file will be read and executed every time you run the bower command which makes it easy to manipulate your application’s assets in one place:

bower init

Bower init is interactive and will ask you a few questions to set up the skeleton of your config. For now, just hit
<enter> to choose the default answer to all the questions, and you’ll end up with a file named bower.json that looks similar to this:

Note: the
bower.json file is standard JSON and will return errors if you are not careful with your quotes and commas. Now run bower install to gather your libraries:

bower install

Now you have Bootstrap and FontAwesome ready to go!

Alter the Installation Path

To recap, we installed jQuery with one simple command. Then we made a configuration file that can fetch specific versions of our favorite frameworks from the Internet quickly and easily. But if you notice, they are all installing into a very specific directory
/bower_components/ which is fine, unless your application is currently looking for libraries in the /assets/ folder for example. Let’s wrap up by showing you the steps to tell Bower to install your packages into this directory.

The
bower.json file you created earlier is a configuration that holds directives for Bower that are specific to the packages you wish to install as well as some meta information. Bower requires another configuration file named .bowerrc if you wish to change higher level settings, like forcing SSL, or pointing to something other than the default Bower repository. Another directive we can set in the .bowerrc file is the target directory, so let’s set that up.

First we need to manually create the
.bowerrc file.

If you’re Using Windows:

echo "" > .bowerrc

If you’re not using Windows:

touch .bowerrc

Now, edit the .bowerrc file and add the directory key with the value of assets/vendors like this:

{
"directory" : "assets/vendors"}

This tells Bower to install any packages into the assets/vendors folder (relative to the .bowerrc file). Now you just need to run bower install to collect your packages into this new directory.

bower install

That just touches upon the power of Bower, but there’s so much more in the
docs and api. If you need just a little more convincing, just visit the large and growing repository of packages found here: http://bower.io/search/ and see if your favorite library is available.

Happy coding!

]]>2015-02-03T16:57:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/the-value-of-the-right-project-management-tools
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/the-value-of-the-right-project-management-tools#When:17:35:00Z
Is there such a thing as a perfect project management tool? It seems with the numerous options available, there is still a need to create additional tracking documents, spreadsheets, or other client-friendly reports. It begs the question of whether valuable time is lost searching for the right tool versus managing the project.

Selecting the Right Tool

A key factor in selecting a tool is ensuring that it works for your industry and type of project. Programs that work for quick turn projects will not necessarily work for long term ones, but the following are universally important for ensuring a successful project:

Timelines: Ability to set, track, and adapt milestones

Resourcing: Assignment of team members to the work

Utilization: Percentage of a resource’s time dedicated to the project

In the digital world, projects such as web apps and website development can take months from start to finish, so having a system to track not only the timeline but also resource availability is crucial.
Merlin is a globally-used project management tool built by other project managers that we currently use at GRAYBOX. It is easy to learn, and provides great visibility into workload for our team, allowing us to prioritize milestones for current projects and plan the start of future work.

Merlin to the Rescue

Account Manager support: By creating a master project list of all work in the agency and viewing the “utilization” report, I have a window into the workload of all resources, allowing the account managers to address what milestones may be conflicting or at risk if individuals are at too high of a capacity. This prevents surprises and allows us to plan accordingly with the client.

Development support: Having a visual representation of the hours assigned to tasks and duration planned for each helps me to support the team by informing them of key milestones on their plates for the coming weeks.

Sales support: In addition to managing current deliverables, Merlin allows users to view future schedules as well, helping me to inform the sales department of when they can start to push for new work at a time when resources are available.

Client support: Though many clients don’t have Merlin, it is easy to save files as PDFs for their viewing. Merlin creates Gantt charts that provide a simple, easy to read view of the project lifecycle. As milestones shift, Merlin visually represents the original date of the tasks, so the client can see where various decisions/events/changes may have impacted the progression of milestones.

Overall, Merlin is a solid tool for our agency – helping to coordinate, plan, and manage the various moving parts of the work, priorities for the team, and ability to bring in new, exciting projects when the time is right for our developers. Which project management tool do you use?

]]>2015-01-27T17:35:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/2014-was-a-very-exciting-year-at-graybox
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/2014-was-a-very-exciting-year-at-graybox#When:18:23:00Z
2014 was a very exciting year at GRAYBOX! It was a huge thrill to be able to serve and work with so many of our
amazing clients. We were able to offer many high-quality sites and modernize many companies web experiences. I’m very proud of what we’ve accomplished. All told, we launched over 25 websites, completed over 40 projects and worked with over 75 great companies!

Sites of special note released this year are:

Farwest Steel, an innovate B2B informational site that helps their audience explore all the product and services they can offer.

Fabric Depot, a massive Magento Enterprise e-commerce store that completely modernizes a large inventory in a complex industry.

STAR Autism Support, a large Drupal site that combines B2B informational pages, ticket & event sales, e-commerce and an online video subscription service into one holistic platform.

Green Building Initiative, a large end-to-end web application to manage their complex, multi-year projects from pre-sale to quotation to construction to inspection and building completion.

We unfortunately had three team members leave us this year, but it has been my pleasure to add seven more team members bringing GRAYBOX to 14 people on staff.

Through the growth we also quickly outgrew our old office at 11th and Stark Street in the Fire Station — turns out having 13 people in 600 sq. ft. is a little cramped! After a long search, we were lucky to move to a new space right down the street on the corner of 11th and Sandy Avenue to a building shared with
Surface. It’s much larger (3,200 sq. ft.) and we all have room to breathe again. Plus, it gives us room for two conference rooms, three informal meeting spaces, two private offices, and a Ms. Pac Man machine. It’s a little weird to be in our fourth office in a little over three years, but I’m glad to have this as a home for now.

Some other interesting stats worth mentioning:

23,613.75 Total Hours Worked

1,596 Vacation Hours Used

16,658 Time Entries Logged

45,075 Email’s Sent

78,915 Email’s Received

138,637 SPAM Emails Received

38 Blog Posts Written

306 Isabelle Pug’s Profile Views on our Website

9 Pony Keg’s Tapped

198 Holiday Gifts Sent

I’m very proud of what we’ve accomplished in 2014 and am looking forward to new challenges, new clients and new opportunities in 2015. Thanks everyone for a great year!

I’ve sat through numerous art history classes during my years of schooling. Every single time one of Kandinsky’s paintings appeared on the screen, it instantly captured my attention. The glow of the screen projector made the colors pop. His style is so distinct and characteristic of the era.

Kandinsky was a master of the Gestalt principles, whether he himself realized it or not. He knew how to harness the power of the principles to create an art piece that truly sang to me, as if notes from a sheet of music were somehow translated into geometric lines, shapes, and forms onto canvas. His work is timeless, and I think all designers can learn to better themselves by simply digging a little deeper into Kandinsky’s work and processes.

Earlier I mentioned the Gestalt Principles. “What is gestalt?” you may ask. By definition, it can be translated from German to mean “shape” or “form.” In theory, Gestalt is a term most commonly used in psychology that means “unified whole.” You may have heard of the phrase, “the whole is more than the sum of its parts.” For a while, this theory perplexed me, until I learned more about the Gestalt theory.

It was first introduced in a ground-breaking paper by Max Wertheimer in 1923, an Austro-Hungarian-born psychologist, and was further developed by German psychologists Wolfgang Kohler, Kurt Koffka, and others.

The Gestalt theory can spark new light when it comes to
design. It helps us to think about our compositions in ways that we have not imagined them before. In fact, many principles that come from the Gestalt theory can be applied to all forms of art and design, from painting to photography, digital design to architecture, and good old fashioned print design.

As consumers of various user interfaces (UIs) on a day-to-day basis, we tend to view these UIs as a whole before we see the individual elements that make up the entire interface. Below are the various principles the Gestalt theory covers. All of these principles can be summarized in a few sentences, but the detailed theory behind them can be explored endlessly, should you desire to do so. Let this be a brief introduction to greater understanding.

Figure/Ground

Our eyes try to differentiate an object from its surrounding area. If you think about it, it’s an evolutionary advantage. When we were surviving on the plains of Africa, our vision helped us to spot potential prey or to narrowly escape our potential predators.

A form, silhouette, or shape is inherently perceived as figure (object), while the area surrounding it is perceived as ground (background). We have a tendency to see the figure as positioned in the front, and the ground at a further depth plane that continues to extend behind the figure. The classic Rubin vase illusion of face profiles versus a vase is a great example of figure vs ground. What do you see first? To some, it may seem like an ordinary vase. To others, it may be two faces facing each other over a gray background.

Another great example of figure vs ground is the illustration below. Do you see a silhouette of a tree, or a gorilla and lion facing each other?

The two examples above leave us with a sense of confusion, as we are not sure which item is figure and which is ground. When users are looking at designs, one of the first things they will do is determine what elements are figure and what is ground. This is mostly a subconscious thought, unless a designer is purposely trying to create a juxtaposition between the two. The easier it is for a user to distinguish between what elements are figure and what elements are ground, the better their user experience, as the elements are not creating unwanted noise or confusion within a design.

Area & Convexity

Area and Convexity can further define the differences between figure and ground.

In the principle of area, the smaller of two overlapping objects is commonly interpreted as figure, while the larger object is interpreted as ground.

In the principle of convexity, convex patterns tend to be perceived as figures more than concave patterns.

Similarity

With the principle of similarity, elements that share similar characteristics are perceived as more related than elements that do not share those characteristics. This statement sounds obvious, but it can be manipulated in various ways.

Characteristics that can be potentially manipulated are:

size

shape

color

texture

transparency

direction

etc.

When viewing a group of objects, elements sharing the same characteristics as mentioned above are perceived as being related.

One example of similarity when applied to web design is the usage of link colors. Usually, links are styled differently from the rest of the content, but each are styled similarly. The old standard used to be blue, underlined text, but that has since changed to accommodate unique styling based on a design. The rule here is to keep link and button styles consistent. Users not only consume a website’s or app’s content, but they also learn how to navigate through it based on visual cues. If a link color is blue on one page, but orange on another, users will have trouble differentiating what text type is a link versus an accent color, highlighted text, and the like.

Focal Points

Conversely, when similarity does occur, an object can be emphasized further if it is dissimilar to other objects. This is called an anomaly, or focal point, of a set of elements. These elements can hold the viewer’s attention. Naturally, our brains are wired to spot patterns, and if an element contrasts from the rest of the surrounding elements, we quickly become aware of it. This goes back to ancient humans spotting potential prey or predators back on the plains of Africa where quickly identifying a contrasting element from its surrounding environment, no matter how subtle it may be, can be the difference between eating or being eaten.

Law of Prägnanz

Roughly translated, this means Law of orderliness or simplicity. As human beings, we prefer things that are simple, ordered, and uncluttered. We attempt to perceive complex or anomalous shapes into the most simplest forms possible for ourselves. Take for example, the object below. You can probably make out a square, circle, and triangle from this form, but by itself, it is ambiguous in shape.

Closure

Closure occurs when an object is incomplete or not entirely enclosed. Our brains attempt to fill in the gaps if enough information is provided to us. Again, this is our human instinct, as we try to simplify what we see into the most basic shapes or forms. By doing so, we can process what we see easier and faster without overcomplicating ourselves.

Like Prägnanz, this law yearns for simplicity. Unlike Prägnanz, however, instead of separating and interpreting different shapes from one large form, we do the opposite; we combine different parts to form a whole. Take for example, the three circles with triangle cutouts in each one. For most people, we see a white triangle overlaying the three circles at its points. Another example is the panda figure, also below. We attempt to close the white gaps to process the image in our minds. By combining different shapes to form a single shape, we simplify a figure, gaining clarity and understanding.

Continuation

With the law of continuation, we prefer to see continuous, unbroken paths and curves. Our eyes move through one object and continue to follow its intended path. Elements arranged in a line or curve are typically perceived as being related to each other, even if we attempt to apply other Gestalt laws with it. If we see the example below, these two lines intersect. Here, the law of Similarity (green color) is actually weaker than the law of Continuation (following a path), as we try to view this green and gray path as a horizontal line, rather than an angled green line and angled gray line.

Uniform Connectedness

With the law of unity, elements that have a visual connection are perceived as related, whereas elements with no connection are not related.

In the figure below, we see 2 sets of a circle and square connected by a line, rather than a pair of each form. Note that lines do not necessarily have to touch other objects to form a connection; they can simply point to an object to imply one.

Common Regions

Uniform connectedness can also refer to a relation of elements that are defined by enclosing elements within other elements, regions, or defined areas. In the figure below, we see two separate sets of circles, even though they may share the same shape and color. Because of the enclosure, we no longer pair the green circles together, but rather, as their own separate entities within each enclosed region.

In design, the use of borders around a group of elements is a great way to create a distinct separation from other elements near it.

Proximity

The Law of Proximity states that elements that are close to each other are perceived as a related group than elements that lie farther apart. If you take a look at the illustration below, the one on the left has circles placed without proximity. All of the circles are perceived as their own separate shape. The illustration on the right has grouped the circles into a uniformed block. Because of this grouping, they are now perceived as one group rather than individual shapes. This law is similar to the law of Common Regions, but instead employs the use of space rather than enclosure to separate elements from one another.

1 + 1 = 3 effect

Typically, we think of white space as a background element, but when manipulated, it can become an active visual element. An example is the 1 + 1 = 3 effect. When elements are placed closely together, the white space between the objects transforms into its own individual element, becoming visually active as the elements move closer together. We’ve seen an example of a grid of squares and the optical illusion of seeing gray dots in between the corners of the grid. We can avoid amplification of this noise by being mindful of how we place elements on our mockups and how much space we give between elements.

Symmetry

By and large, human beings are more or less symmetrical. We have a pair of eyes, ears, legs, arms, hands, feet, etc. It is in our nature to attempt to perceive objects as having some form of symmetry. Below, we see a group of brackets. Rather than perceiving them as an individual group of open brackets and an individual group of closed brackets, we see them as three pairs of open and closed brackets. Here, symmetry trumps similarity. Also with this example, symmetry trumps proximity, as we view an open and closed bracket pairing, rather than two sets of closed and open brackets with lone brackets on either side of them.

Common Fate (Synchrony)

With the Law of Common Fate, elements that move in the same direction are perceived as being more related than elements that are stationary or that move in different directions. Elements that change at the same time are also grouped together. Regardless of their shape, color, etc., elements that are seen as moving or changing together will be perceived as being related.

Parallelism

Elements that are parallel to each other are seen as more related than elements that are not parallel to each other. Lines are often interpreted as leading, pointing, or moving in some direction. Parallel lines pointing or moving in the same direction are perceived as being related because of this same directional movement.

Past Experiences

The Law of Past Experiences is a tricky law to employ, as it is highly subjective based upon an individual. It is perceived that elements that are shared within our past are known as being related. For example, a red, yellow, and green light in a row or column tends to convey to many as a stop light. We perceive red as stop, yellow as slow down/stop, and green as go. Because of our past experience, we may assume that many others will understand the same thing.

The same can be true for language. We perceive a pattern of strokes that are grouped to form characters or letters, which are then understood as words that form sentences. This is universal across all languages (provided that you understand the language in which you reference). Note that this arrangement of characters may not be familiar if observers lack such past experiences with the characters (people that view the word dog with no understanding of English will not know what this word conveys).

With this example, the law of proximity goes hand in hand with the law of past experiences. By inserting blank space characters between words, our eyes group together the letters correctly, thereby establishing words as the most recognizable visual units in text, rather than individual letters. Compare this to the style of writing “scriptio continua” for example. We can quickly see the importance of this when we removealloftheblankspacesfromthetextprovided or pl acet heb lanks pacesi nune xpect edo rw rong pla ces.

Summary

We’ve only begun to scratch the surface of the Gestalt principles.

The principles help us to design mindfully, questioning whether or not an element is truly needed or simply unnecessary. Grouping of elements, layouts of a page or screen, size and colors of images, text blocks, and/or shapes are all dictated by these principles. Even emotions can be triggered through the use of these principles. Simply browse through Kandinsky’s paintings and one can quickly see the musicality of his works.

If you can harness the power of these principles in such a way to become a master at them, then you will become a master at visually communicating your designs to others in ways that words simply cannot achieve.

Below is a list of resources that brought this blog post to life. Thank you to all who have helped contribute to them.

]]>2015-01-19T19:31:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/dynamic-categories-on-subpages-in-expressionengine
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/dynamic-categories-on-subpages-in-expressionengine#When:18:44:00Z
During a recent project, one of ExpressionEngine’s downfalls quickly forced me to think outside of EE’s built-in template syntax. The task was to allow the user to set ANY page to 1) A channel listing page (of any channel) 2) To START from any selected category and 3) Allow users to drill down into any category below the selected parent category. On the surface, this seems like it should be an easy task, particularly if you are not accustomed to ExpressionEngine’s syntax and limitations. Luckily, this downfall allows us to tackle this obstacle from many different approaches.

First, lets look at the template from which we will be calling our new template:

You’ll notice that we are requiring an entry to pull our initial data from, i.e. our “static page” or “subpage”. Which is essentially just a page to house all basic data (title, body text, sidebar elements,), along with the information to let EE know which entries to display (channel, category). You’ll also notice the snippet in which we will be referencing our template where the magic happens:

Here we are calling a new embed variable called “categoree” and setting it equal to a
WB Category Select field, which will enable the user to select the category of entries to display on the page. Since EE needs category ID’s and not simply the name of the category, we have set this variable to the category ID of said category which the user will select.

The other half of this template (I’ll just include the relevant bit), is how we are going to set a category by using a GET variable. The reason why we need to set the category via a GET variable and not by passing it as a category segment, which contains either the url title or id of a category, is because if we do then EE will easily get lost on which page to return to retrieve our original page.

And finally, we have where the entry retrieving actually happens. This is what is going on in this snippet:

We are first checking to see if a GET variable even exists in the URL. If it doesn’t, we know we are simply on the original subpage, and thus we are on the highest level category and we don’t need to do anything special since we already have the category ID we selected earlier from the entry, specifically in the WB Category Select field.

If a GET variable does exist, we need to also make sure that we are not somehow on a pagination page (further security).

We are setting our entire results in PHP equal to that of an entire EE channel entries parameter. Specifically, the entry list parameter. This way, if we aren’t specifically providing a list of relevant Entry_ID’s this parameter will simply ignore this, and work as normal by just selecting the category ID from the field.

If the GET variable does indeed exist, we need to perform a few active record queries in order to provide EE a list of Entry_ID’s that match the category selected by the web user via the Category Sidebar widget. We simply grab the URL title from the variable, and perform a lookup to retrieve the category ID via an inner join method between categories and categories_posts tables and cat_id and cat_url_title columns. This gives us an Entry_ID array full of relevant Entry_ID’s separated by a pipe character.

It seems like a bit of work for such a simple task. But the fact is, unless you are able to assume at which segment these pages will exist, this method is entirely needed. Otherwise, we could just create a template group titled appropriately to our URL segments and any relevant templates. This setup was quickly shot down by the fact that this functionality had to truly be dynamic. With some ingenuity and a few lines of some PHP code, we were able to accomplish our results without having the need to extend our existing custom modules and extensions.

Don’t forget to enable PHP on this template, and happy coding!

]]>2015-01-05T18:44:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/digital-new-years-resolution
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/digital-new-years-resolution#When:15:15:00ZIt’s that time of year where many of us reflect on the past and consider the future. As a developer, I find myself tackling projects using the same tools and programming languages I always use because I am comfortable with them. But this is no way to stay abreast of all the changes happening in technology around me.

Accomplished in 2014

At the beginning of 2014, I challenged myself to create a project with two newer technologies I had not used before. In the end, I created a web application that searches for FontAwesome icons using EmberJS, and I also built a tool that other developers can use to create mock-up sites using Jekyll.

Why? Growth. To avoid becoming complacent or stagnant in my career.

Goals for 2015

What technical challenges are you going to take on in 2015? A language you haven’t used before? Or could you benefit from learning more about the technology you already know like jQuery, CSS3, and HTML5? This is the year I’ll tackle the Go Programming Language and Haskell.

What is your digital New Year’s Resolution?

]]>2014-12-31T15:15:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/compass-with-sass-for-team-development
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/compass-with-sass-for-team-development#When:20:10:00Z
As a front-end developer, there are many go-to applications and workflows that have become common in our digital tool chests. Easily my favorite and most valuable tool is SASS.

This post will be diving into a setup of SASS for a team of developers so I'll do a quick overview on what SASS is before I get into the more advanced setup of the SASS solution for teams that we here at GRAYBOX are incorporating into our workflows.

What is SASS?

First of all, SASS stands for "Syntactically Awesome StyleSheets". Yes, you read that right…there's an "Awesome" in the acronym and it's entirely appropriate.

Here's the most succinct definition of what SASS is and this comes directly from the makers of this magical compiler.

"Sass is an extension of CSS that adds power and elegance to the basic language. It allows you to use variables, nested rules, mixins, inline imports, and more, all with a fully CSS-compatible syntax. Sass helps keep large stylesheets well-organized, and get small stylesheets up and running quickly, particularly with the help of the Compass style library."
- SASS-Lang.com

Working solo is easy and there are many SASS compilers whether you prefer command line use or a GUI solution. I've worked with a few GUI's but my favorite (as referred to in my past blog post) is CodeKit which is far and away my go-to GUI compiler for all things SASS.

The Team-SASS Challenge

The challenge with GUIs and working solo is that it works great when you are coding by yourself. The challenge comes when you work in a team via a git repo and not everyone has a Mac or PC and/or your favorite GUI app. In the case of CodeKit, it's a Mac-only application so when I'm working with a contractor, I have to make some assumptions that aren't always true. Do they have a Mac? Do they want to invest in my preferred application for a rare update?

In the case of CodeKit, the application (and many like it) create a unique configuration file that manages the compiler. It's great for one user to customize the target/source files but problems arise when trying to share access amongst developers to make minor changes to a site's stylesheets.

Enter Compass (http://compass-style.org), our preferred method to configure our SASS compiling. Compass gives you one config file that, if setup correctly, will make it easy to collaborate on without breaking things. (Note: CodeKit does offer Compass configuration but I've found it easier to setup via command-line as explained below.)

Here is our method for starting a new SASS/Compass project and one that we've found to work well for our team.

First of all, before I start with our step-by-step setup, you'll need to make sure you have the following installed to follow my steps.

For the instructions below, I'll be working with Apple OS X. If you are on a PC or LINUX, the steps should be similar but the actual implementation may differ.

The GRAYBOX Process (Compass/SASS/Bootstrap)

Setup/clone the git repository for your new project to your local machine.

Open your command-line application (Terminal on a Mac) and navigate to your just-cloned folder on your local machine.

Install your framework (Bootstrap 3 for this example)

bower install bootstrap-sass-official

Create a Compass project in your web folder. At the terminal command, navigate to the web root folder (ex: "public_html") and then create/setup your compass project. Because we prefer to keep our assets (css/js/images/sass) all contained in one folder called "assets", this is a good location to create your new compass project.

compass create assets

The default compass install adds files we won't need for our framework so you can now delete the folder called "stylesheets" and remove all the files in the newly-generated "sass" folder.

Now comes the cool part…customizing your compass file to allow you to pull your framework files as well as your custom sass files. Navigate to your assets folder and open the newly created file called config.rb. Assuming your file structure looks like this...

Next, create a new file in your assets/sass folder called "style-custom.scss" (or whatever you prefer). I like adding "-custom" to my style name so I can compare it later to the original framework styling if I need to debug.

Next, create a subfolder in your sass folder titled "custom". This will contain two of the most used files in your custom sass/framework setup.

In the sass/custom folder, add a blank file called "_app.scss". This will be your custom sass file where you will do all your custom stylesheet work.

Using your file manager, copy/paste the file called _variables.scss from the folder "bower_components/bootstrap-sass-official/assets/stylesheets/bootstrap" and paste a copy into your newly created assets/custom folder.

Navigate to bower_components/bootstrap-sass-official/assets/stylesheets and open the _bootstrap.scss file. Add "//" (comment-out line) before the line referencing the variables.css file since we're going to be using our own custom variables file in our custom folder.

Example:
// @import "bootstrap/variables";

Open the style-custom.scss file contained in your assets/sass folder and copy/paste the following and then save the file.

Let's now fire up compass and check to make sure it's compiling the right code. Open your terminal/command-line application and navigate to your assets folder (the folder that contains the config.rb file). Once there, enter the following to start compass.

compass watch

You should see a message along the lines of "Compass is watching...". If you see any error messages, it's likely a result of an incorrect file path or a misspelled file name. Double check your config.rb file or your style-custom.scss to find the problem.

Final Thoughts:

I recognize there may be a good GUI solution for this but I've found for our situation, with multiple developers on different platforms, the command-line setup works most consistently. There are lots of configuration options for Compass that you can check out
here to handle any custom file structures you may have. This is by no means the only solution and there are many ways you can accomplish this but I've found this method to work best with our workflows.

If you have any comments, questions or suggestions, please feel free to leave us a note in the comment section.

Resources

]]>2014-12-29T20:10:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/e-signature-tools-comparison
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/e-signature-tools-comparison#When:17:38:00Z
In the web application and subscription software world, sometimes a simple "check this box to agree to terms" becomes insufficient. With the move toward more online offerings being delivered as an ongoing service, SaaS companies begin to bump up against legal principles that require more thoughtful solutions. When this is necessary, an Electronic Signature ("e-Signature") tool is a great way to help automate the transaction process while still meeting the legal requirements of agreement to terms.

Consider your typical Business to Consumer (B2C) e-commerce transaction: I'm shopping for my niece for Christmas. She's really excited about stuffed animals (she's only 11 months old) so I navigate to Acme's Stuffed Animals Emporium to find the BEST fluffy critter on the web. I find what I'm looking for-- a blue alligator with a bell in the tail-- add it to my cart, and enter my payment info. Before my order is placed I'm prompted with a message: "Please carefully review your order. All returns require a 15% restocking fee." Being the diligent shopper I am I take a moment to ponder this fuzzy blue toy with playfully menacing teeth, decide I still like it, and place my order.

My transaction was simple. It's a basic ONE TIME exchange of goods for money, with a clearly defined start and end point, and a tangible action to be performed and received by both parties.

Some online transactions aren't that simple. In some cases the nature of the transaction itself is more complex. Consider, for example, signing up for a service delivered online that has multiple potential add-on features, and adding/removing those features from your subscription has implications for the next billing date, amount, and overall duration of your subscription term. Leaving aside the fact that you should make your offerings more easily understood (see my previous post on subscription based revenue opportunities), the complex, and potentially confusing nature of this arrangement should be spelled out and clearly agreed to by the Customer.

In other cases, legal statutes require more formality in the purchase and sale agreement. Think about the purchase of a house, for example: when I was negotiating the purchase of my house this summer, there were at least 20 pages in each offer/counter-offer package, each required by law. Even if the seller and I had wanted to eliminate the paperwork from the process we couldn't because various state statutes required the presence of those signed and initialed documents.

However, rather than needing to interrupt my day to travel to the realtor's office, or print, sign, and fax paperwork, I signed electronically for every painful revision. In these more complex scenarios, when it's either prudent or required to present the buyer with more details, and confirm their assent to the terms via initials, signatures, and dates, an e-signature platform is the way to go.

At its core, an e-signature platform allows you to present information for signature electronically. Where the more basic "agree to terms" checkbox also allows you to simply display content to a customer and require they "agree" before moving on, the e-signature tool requires that customer to digitally "sign" the document. This signature can take several formats: This might be a simple signature; it could be initialing specific terms or elements of the contract; sometimes there may be an email verification step to confirm the user is who they say they are. Regardless, the core idea is that you're gaining a greater degree of certainty that (1) the user is who they say they are, and (2) they are acknowledging and agreeing to the terms by way of taking these additional proactive steps to complete the purchase.

There are a LOT of options on the market that provide e-signature functionality. I recently created an evaluation matrix for a client in which I compared what I deemed to be the top eight e-signature tools. I compared these eight tools on a combination of feature set, pricing, API/Integration access, clarity of documentation for using the tools, and online evaluations and user feedback for each tool. Through this process, I found that there are really four key factors that separate the various options.

1. Features

Obviously, right? At their core, each one of these tools is doing the same thing. They're presenting a document for signature. So I was surprised at how well, and how poorly, some of them were able to accomplish this core goal. For example: most of the platforms allowed you to present a form to users, identify where on that form they should sign, and capture their email signature for your records. However, not all of the services allow you to brand that page with your own logo and colors to fit within your website; not all of the solutions allow you to have the customer sign multiple documents; and not all of the solutions allowed you to pull customer-specific data into the document (ie: name, address, etc) to personalize the document being signed.

The valuable lesson learned here is to think carefully about what you need out of your e-signature tool. Don't assume that all tools offer the same experience, or that any tool will give you the flexibility you need. Walk carefully through the steps in the customer signature process, giving special thought to what data you need to present, if there are multiple people who need to sign, what notifications you want to have sent to your team or the customer, and what the look & feel of the experience should be. Once you have this picture in your mind, evaluate the tools by determining which one(s) can meet those requirements and provide the desired experience.

2. Pricing Model

It's not coincidence that I list Pricing Model after Features. In most cases, the basic plans of the services are all pretty comparable, and the real question becomes how far up their pricing plan structure you need to travel before you find the feature set you're looking for. Things like API Access (discussed below), branding the forms, multiple signers, etc. CAN all impact price.
However, the single biggest factor for pricing is the number of signed documents you're allowed per month/year. Most of the plans have an explicit cap on the number of documents you can sign through the platform at a given subscription level. For example: You might be able to have 500 documents per month for $199, or 1200 documents per year for $2400 (two different products, two different price models and payment structures, but the same per-document price). Some use a tiered table (ie: $2.35/document up to 1000 documents, and then $1.95/document from 1001-5000 documents, etc.).

The alternative is the number of "users." Users are those that have the permission to send contracts for signature. In this world, the number of documents you sign is less important than how many employees you'll have sending documents for signature.

The key here is to attempt to accurately project how many documents you'll have signed per month, and how many users from your company you'll need to be interacting with those documents through the e-signature tool. If all documents are sent electronically through an automated system (ie: 1 user), then a per-user model might be really compelling. If you have many users who need to interact with documents for signature and a relatively low volume of documents to be signed, then the per-document model might make more sense. The key that I found here is ensuring you find the "break points" in the pricing model. At what level do the rules change such that we have to pay under a different structure? Understanding that question helps you plan out how well this tool with scale cost-wise as your business grows is really important to being able to project cash flows and the ROI on each of the e-signature options.

3. Documentation

While none of these tools is incredibly complex, they each have nuances for initial setup, configuration, and management. The (1) availability and (2) extent of documentation varies quite a bit. When reviewing the various options, one thing that really stood out was the ability to access their online documentation, and then to easily find relevant information. For some providers, the documentation information can only be accessed after you have an account. For others, you can clearly access their online help without a login to get a better feel for the degree of "self help" you'll be able to achieve. The bottom line: determine what you can from the public side of their websites. If the answers are inconclusive, push one of their sales reps for a demo account that will give you access to their online documentation. Once you have access to this content, ask yourself a question you anticipate needing to answer, such as "how do I merge Customer names into the Contract?" Try to find the answers to this and other basic questions, and see how easy (or difficult) it is to find those answers. That should give a good representation of how your experience will be with the provider's help documentation.

4. API Access

While API access is likely only needed for the more automated end of the spectrum, I include it here because almost all of the client requirements for which I reviewed these solutions ended up needing this feature set. There were several really key pieces of information that relate to this aspect of the review process:

What process are you looking to achieve? Do you plan to have an employee monitoring an inbox for notifications that a contract has been signed? Or do you want the signature of the contract to automatically update and progress that customer's record in your CRM or Website? If you want automated actions to take place, you'll need API access.

What information do you want in the Document? While some of the solutions allow you to merge basic information into the Document, most require API access (or a higher tier plan) to make sure each document is specific to the customer, including address, name, and other attributes specific to the transaction like monthly rates or SKUs.

How do I use their API access? The documentation for the various systems comes in greater and lesser degrees of completeness and clarity. If your requirements necessitate programmatic access via their API, have your developer review their API documentation first to make sure it will meet all of your technical requirements.

]]>2014-12-23T17:38:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/adding-a-custom-payment-method-to-expresso-store-in-expressionengine
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/adding-a-custom-payment-method-to-expresso-store-in-expressionengine#When:15:57:00ZDuring the discovery phase of a recent website project, we learned the client used "Sage" for their merchant account and payment processing. Planning on using ExpressionEngine, I looked up which Payment Gateways Expresso Store supported, and read "Sage Pay Direct" and "Sage Pay Server" - and (incorrectly) concluded that "Expresso Store supports Sage" and went on with the building of the website. A little while later, I was at the step to enable their merchant account and learned of my blunder. The client uses Sage Processing Solutions (a US service) and Expresso Store (via the Omnipay framework) supports "Sage Pay" - the UK company with the same parent... but not the same payment system. Very different architecture, very different methods of integration.

Thankfully, Expresso Store supports the adding on of your own custom Payment Method very easily, and we were able to keep the project on track with minimal effort.

Overview:

Expresso Store allows you to add a new payment method without touching their module. This lets you upgrade store without having to update your files, or re-integrate them in their module. Once you have added the payment method, configuration and management is done inside Expresso Store. The Omnipay framework supports standard purchase mechanisms, tokenized billing and recurring billing.
More information about Omnipay can be found on their site

How is this accomplished?

Step 1: Add a new extension, listening for the store_payment_gateways developer hook

Step 2: At a minimum, add a "PurchaseRequest" and a "Response" handler in the extension

Step 3: Enable the payment method, configure, test and test some more

As shared by the Expresso Store Developers in this StackExchange post, first we add the extension. This simply listens for Store to send the developer hook "store_payment_gateways" and returns the results of our custom payment gateway. The files for your custom payment method are then stored in your extension under the "Omnipay" folder. Here's an example extension function for adding our custom "Sage" payment method.

The simplest technique from here is to copy another payment method already in Expresso Store, and edit it to meet your needs. The configuration of your payment method is defined in the Gateway.php file. This is where you define the variables that will be necessary in configuring your gateway.

In addition to the Gateway file, you must at least create a PurchaseRequest.php and a Response.php to process the basic handlings of your payment method.

Additional files can be added to support different test modes, recurring billing, refunds, token charges and any other interactions you may have with your payment system.

Here is the file structure of our custom payment method.

Once you have added these files and updated your extension to add the listener for the developer hook, you will find your payment method in the Payment Methods settings area in Expresso Store

Enable the new payment method and click on the name to update the settings

Each of these settings is available in your payment method to process the interaction.

Many options are available, including interactions via REST, JSON, HTTP, SOAP or any PHP-supported technology you might need. The Omnipay framework is there to help support but generally stays out of the way of your specific implementation. Full documentation is found at the Omnipay page.

]]>2014-12-04T15:57:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/design-trends-new-web-landscape
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/design-trends-new-web-landscape#When:16:03:00Z
As a Web Designer, I come across a myriad of sites every day. I see exceptional, great and downright bad
web design practices, and even trends that spring up every now and then. Below is a small list of web trends I've encountered frequently that benefit the web community as a whole.

Scrolling Pages Finally Get Some Love

Often times as a designer, clients ask me if users scroll. Time and time again, I reference
the article "
The Myth of the Page Fold: Evidence From User Testing" by Joe Leech from cxpartners.co.uk regarding this. They get nervous that the content towards the bottom of
the page won’t get enough attention and request for what seems like “all important
content” to be placed above the fold. Thanks to designers and developers alike, we can
finally quell client fury and banish these evil thoughts! Countless sites, like
Smart USA and clothing outfitter G-­Star Raw use long scrolling pages well, proving that "below­ the­ fold" content is just as important as "above ­fold" content.

Smart USA

G-Star Raw

Fixed Nav ­- Not Just a Fad

What makes long scrolling truly effective is fixed navigation. Let's take a look at name
brands
Nike and Adidas, whose behemoths of a website are easy to navigate with the aid
of a fixed nav element. The content provided on their pages can get quite lengthy in some
instances, but with the help of the fixed nav element, users can quickly access content
from other pages if need be without the bother of scrolling up to the top of the page or down to the footer. Another great example is
Pinterest's website. The
website’s main objective is purely for content absorption while getting lost in the myriad of
photos that blaze through, scroll upon scroll. Power ­users who browse through the
website can easily access the search / browse features quickly at a moment’s notice. Pinterest also has a unique example of using fixed nav elements at the bottom of the
page, where users can manage their pins, create boards or get help from the buttons
provided. All of this creates for an unobtrusive user experience where content shines
through clearly and navigation elements provide support when needed.

Nike

Adidas

Pinterest

Flat UI with Subtle Shading/Gradients

It has been around for a while now, and with tech titians Apple, Google and Microsoft
leading the trends for flat design, we don’t see this stopping anytime soon. We maintain a
flat quality of even the smallest of icons, but designers are sneaky enough to incorporate
some form of depth into their designs by utilizing subtle shading to replicate depth and shadows. The use of overlapping elements also helps in conveying depth and perspective to users. Check out
Realtii for their
nice hero image. The use of long shadows for the buildings and overlapping objects like
trees and apartments provide depth and perspective to an otherwise flat­ design
landscape.

Realtii

Free Web Fonts via Google Fonts

A few years ago, web fonts were limited to simple css tags of serif and sans serif with a few default fonts provided by operating systems and web browsers (Georgia
or Verdana to name a few). Gone are those days! With
Google Fonts providing a diverse and
wide array of (free!) web fonts, even the humblest of websites can add a punch of
personality by integrating these web fonts. Additionally, one can also rely on
Adobe Typekit, Fonts.com, and the like if you want to broaden your web font selection for a fee.

Google Fonts

Adobe Typekit

Fonts.com

Meaningful Hero Image Replaces Banner Content

It has been proven time and time again how ineffective carousels are. There has even been a
mini­-website created referencing all of the research proving so! Fortunately, there has been a shift in thinking regarding this. Designers are increasingly replacing these often-­ignored carousel sliders with more meaningful, actionable content.
Invision, a prototyping web app, has a very clear and concise headline with an equally clear
CTA in which users can quickly and easily sign up for the service.
Macaw, a web design tool built of both designers and developers, is also a great example
of using a powerful hero image supported by meaningful text. It also integrates a fixed
nav and long scrolling page to explain at length about their product.

Invision

Macaw

Mobile, Mobile, Mobile

The idea of mobile-­first has really been out there for a while now, but what we forget sometimes when designing for mobile is the fact that the web’s reach is global, now
more than ever. Users found in emerging markets (like China, Russia, India, or
Brazil) are influencing global web traffic more than ever. Because of this sense of global
engagement, we must be:

Aware that a rigid standard of screen sizes alone will not be a sufficient way in determining which experience to
deliver to a user. Since a lot of countries have their own unique mobile device market,
and each market has a wide range of various screen sizes, we as designers must think
fluidly.

We must also be aware of connectivity, especially in countries with erratic data service.
Have your website’s images optimized for web, strip down your code so it is clean and
efficient, and use other best practices to ease in expenditure of website data.

Videos Replace Images

Ever heard of “a picture speaks a thousand words?” Now imagine what a video can do! More and
more of the web population has access to better internet speeds and connections, which
opens up a new world of using video as the new hero image or banner. This goes hand in
hand with utilizing video as background imagery.
Vimeo is a great example of this and
aptly so for the video-­sharing website.
Airbnb is another great example employing the use
of video backgrounds, giving a sense of emotion to the accommodation-­booking website.
Kickstarter is yet another example, employing a video as both a background image and
hero area, with supporting text/buttons to learn more about their website and how to set
up a Kickstarter.

Vimeo

Airbnb

Kickstarter

Landing Pages

Sometimes, a simple landing page can beat out a full website.
Squarespace is a great
example. Its main CTA is for users to sign up for their website-­building service or walk
through a tour, while existing users can simply login to manage their websites. Users also have the ability to navigate to other sections of the landing page by using horizontal scrolling. This is a unique way for users to scroll through the website's various sections, rather than a more conventional vertical-scroll approach. Additionally, quite a few mobile apps
employ the use of a landing page for their promotional website.
Facebook Paper is an
example. With the use of minimal text­-based content for their website, they took the
liberty of incorporating video backgrounds on their landing page to tell their story. They also took the approach of going with a horizontal-scrolling type of navigation.

Squarespace

Facebook Paper

Conclusion

The trends listed above are but a few examples of an overall shift in the web space.
Better/faster connections lend to new and improved ways of telling a brand’s story and a
broader range of screen sizes remind us to think fluidly. 2015 is slowly creeping up and it
will be interesting to see what new trends pop up and what old trends will pass on.

]]>2014-10-27T16:03:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/magento-enterprise-rule-based-product-relations-target-rules
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/magento-enterprise-rule-based-product-relations-target-rules#When:18:24:00Z
Target rules are a killer feature of the Magento Enterprise platform, but as with many of the great components in the Magento ecosystem, the documentation is a bit lacking in practical examples and the thorough details necessary to get the results you may be looking for.

Now you have a list of all the rules that will apply to this product. Turn them off one at a time:

UPDATE
enterprise_targetrule
SET
### 0 to de-activate, 1 to activate
is_active = 0
WHERE
### enter the rule_id from each of the rules from the results above
rule_id = 169;

You now should have all rules turned off for a given product, for a given rule type (related, up-sell, cross-sell).

Turn the first rule on, open and save the product in the admin panel, and check the results.

Now you can either turn that rule off and try the next (to get the discreet results from each rule) or turn on the next one (and see the progressive combination of the rules together).

Tip #2 - "is one of" versus "contains"

Custom product relations can leverage custom product attributes, but don't mix your data types! The target rule interface is powerful, and, in many cases, will allow you to break the rules if you want.

For example, we have an attribute "Designer" with a pre-defined list of options to select from. But if I use this attribute for a target rule, it defaults to the operator "contains" and allows me to select an option from this list. THIS WILL NOT WORK! "Contains" is only to be used for text attributes you can enter custom strings into. The proper method is to use "is one of..." and select the option from the list.

Tip #3 - Matching by Category can get you into trouble

We have an installation that uses target rules to create up-sell products based on the category of matched products, but all products in the catalog are part of one "All Products" category.

Our selected product was in category 36 and the "all category".

Our desired target was in category 36, category 211 and the "all category".

A product which was showing as a match was part of category 502 and the "all category".

Here is what the config looked like:

How this reads in English:

"Take all products in category 36 and make a list of ALL categories each of those products are in (this will include the "all category"). Now find all products which are in any of these categories".

This simple target rule now has matched EVERY SINGLE PRODUCT IN THE STORE - and caused me a lot of confusion. How did we solve it?

Because we were matching based on a specific category, we could also set the "products to display" to the same selected category and not fall in the pit of over-matching the target rules.

]]>2014-10-17T18:24:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/start-living-and-stop-worrying-about-backups
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/start-living-and-stop-worrying-about-backups#When:17:12:00Z
If you have any data in your life and you’re not worried about losing it, you’re doing it all wrong. If you have never lost any data, you’re a statistical anomaly. Of course, the mantra to repeat here is “backup, backup, backup”. Having a proper backup system in place is paramount – especially when someone else’s data is in your care. But a backup system is even better if it’s automated and transparent. Even more to the point, a backup system needs to work simply and flawlessly in order to be trustworthy. You should never even need to know it's there - until you need it.

I used to worry about backups. A lot. As a
developer, my entire life can become unhinged for a short while if data goes missing, even for a short while. I have tried many backup strategies including complicated LVM snapshots, Rsync snapshots and TAR and archiving systems for the purposes of backing up web-based applications and data. None of them was perfect. Either the backups took too long, consumed too many resources to perform frequently, took too long to restore or only included a subset of the total data set (for example, excluding the files of a MySQL database).

The complexity of backing up differently profiled systems is unnerving, each system is unique and has it’s own operating system and version, application set and particular business requirements for backup frequency. These nuances can result in a lot of anxiety, forcing a systems administrator to create unique layered systems with different components backing up different things targeting different servers at different frequencies.

Even with systems in place, there was always the nagging anxiety that kept me awake at night, wondering: “Are backups even really running? If a server goes down RIGHT NOW, will I be able to recover? How long would it take to rebuild a system? How old is the most recent backup? Did I set up anything to backup on the new server?” Even that amount of paranoia isn’t enough insurance against data loss, and it’s not healthy to be on your iPhone in the middle of the night under the covers monitoring backups.

Then one day I found R1Soft Server Backup Manager. There are many great things about the product, that have allowed me to feel more confident about backups, and subsequently more relaxed.

I’m usually not one for product endorsements. In my Utopia, all products would be unbranded and judged on their merits rather, than the name of the manufacturer or cleverness of their marketing strategy. Go ahead, call me Gen X. That being said, sometimes professional software tools come into your life that are life-hacking, paradigm-shifting game changers.
R1Soft Server Backup Manager is one of those tools. For enterprise management of one to many different servers it is an ideal solution.

It's easy.

Simple tools create confidence, and everything about SBM is easy. It uses a package-based installation for ease of installation and updates. After that, you're unlikely to ever need the CLI as almost everything can be handled within the SBM interface including backup agent deployments and storage setup.

Incremental block level backups

After the initial sync, these are extremely lightweight. This is possible the most important feature. Block-level backups are the way to go if you don’t want to spend every minute of every day worrying about whether your nightly rsync backup is going to bottleneck your server. They can do this because they bypass the OS file system. As a result there is no requirement for costly calculations of file and is a file truly changed before backing it up. Tip: for desktop users there are other block level backup services such as Carbonite, Mozy and Backblaze.

Flexible policy-based backup strategies and point in time restoration

R1Soft can either backup the ENTIRE server, or just a subset of data at up to a
minutely frequency. It can restore any file (or MySQL data) from any time that is available in it’s point in time restoration cache. R1Soft calls this “Continuous Data Protection” and it is, exactly that.

Simple bare metal restores

If you’re really doing a bare metal restore, it’s also possible you’re in the middle of a dire emergency. The last thing a systems administrator wants in that situation is to be doing a lot of heavy lifting under duress. SBM’s approach is to use an agent-based installer that coordinates the restore with the backup server. Essentially, to perform a restore all one needs to do is boot from an installer and run a wizard. Thank. You.

Robust and flexible monitoring and notifications

I have not had a single failed backup, but it will be good to know if I do, or whether I am out of disk space.

This product that is truly built for backing up servers with web applications and their data – a product built for me. And it is not often that I can say this, but R1Soft Backup Server Manager satisfies all my needs. I am sleeping much better now, thanks.

]]>2014-10-09T17:12:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/practical-web-design
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/practical-web-design#When:15:41:00ZWeb design is often described as an "artistic" or "creative" job. Many think a web designer simply makes a design look "cool" or "pretty". However, sometimes a pretty design just isn't practical. I learned early on, as an artist myself, that I had to separate my art from my work to become a better designer. My job, as a web designer, is to create functional sites that convert, and sometimes putting my 'unique flavor' into the site design simply distracts users and creates a confusing, unusable website. Knowing when to let out my inner-artist, and when to keep it chained up, makes the web a better place for everyone.

At GRAYBOX we aim to create long-term relationships with our clients. A typical project starts with in-depth kickoff meetings, research, and lots of questions to get to know as much as we can about our clients, their customers, and how each project can help our clients reach their business goals. We then prioritize these goals before we design. This list of goals helps helps us answer difficult questions throughout the design process, and helps gives us a starting point when thinking about the organization and functionality of the site. Any time I come upon a roadblock in the design process I refer to this list of goals and ask myself if the design is supporting the business goals. This helps break down those roadblocks, keeps distractions at bay, and in general, makes decision-making much easier.

After any site launches, we'll track conversion metrics and analytics data to improve the performance of each website we create. We can compare this data to our initial project goals to see how effective our plan is performing. If the data says our plan is performing well, we'll start doing minor tweaks to fine tune things to help improve the results even more. If our business goals simply aren't being achieved according to our analytics data, we'll then start investigating to come up with a plan of changes to help get things back on track.

In the end, design is a business, and in business, making money is the end goal. We're here to help our clients meet their goals, and knowing when and how to achieve those goals through good design decisions is key to success.

Golf is often referred to as The Game of Kings. There is a certain civility to a game that requires personal enforcement of rules and penalties. It's a game that can demand a lot of time, involve isolation, and it tends to be fairly quiet, which is possibly why it is so popular among business professionals: What better way to spend time building business relationships than to spend 4-5 hours in isolation with three business associates and no distractions? And in a game that requires such discipline, personal focus, and individual adherence to rules, what better way to judge the character of a business relationship than to see how they play golf, with all of its unique regulations and mannerisms? When playing with a potential or even current associate or colleague, one might wonder, How can I trust this person to be fair with me and follow the rules if I watch them cheat?

It's likely the "individual integrity" aspects of the game are part of what have given rise to the broad and unspoken rules of recreational golf etiquette. You likely won't find them printed in a book, but every experienced golfer knows them, follows them, and expects others to do the same.

So the next time you're invited to the golf course to talk business, here are 17 unspoken rules of golf etiquette to keep in mind:

Show up to the course ahead of time: Whether golfing with co-workers, clients, prospects or your best friend, early is on time. Show up a minimum of 15 minutes before your tee-time, as it may take at least that long to check in. The better route is to give yourself 30 minutes: Hit a few range balls, spend five minutes on the practice green with your putter, and arrive at the first tee relaxed, not rushed. This is especially true when playing with more experienced golfers, who most likely have a pre-round routine and won't want to be rushed to the first tee.

Practice your putting: This requires you to follow rule #1, and show up ahead of time. Spend at least five minutes on the practice green. Get a feel for the speed of the grass. If you sink only one extra putt every other hole as a result of your practice, you'll cut nine strokes from your score. It will also save you the always embarrassing putt that runs off the first green into the sand trap when you hit the ball four times harder than you really needed it to.

Who tees off first: Nobody wants to tee off first on the first hole. It usually has the biggest audience, and you're the least warmed up. There's an easy, time-tested way to decide who goes first: Everyone stand in a circle. One person grabs a tee, spins it in the air, and lets it fall on the ground in the middle of the circle. Whoever the tee points at goes first. Repeat to see who tees second and third, and you'll know who goes last by process of elimination.

Don't talk while players are hitting: Pay attention to the golfers you are with, and show respect both when they are taking their practice swings as well as when they take their shot. It's easy to get caught up in conversation on the course, so make the extra effort to be conscious of when other golfers are hitting to pause your conversation. Keep the same in mind if you're walking or driving a golf cart: Stop walking or if you're in their vicinity to remove distractions.

Play ready golf: Many golfers strictly adhere to the "farthest from the hole hits first" rule. In casual golf, don't sweat it. As long as everyone is paying attention, the golfer who is ready should go first...within reason, of course. The next time you and your buddy are on opposite sides of the fairway, and you're ready but he's still digging for a club in his bag, go ahead and hit the shot even though you're 10 yards ahead. I guarantee all the golfers behind you will be grateful.

Be aware of other golfers on the course: When you are hitting the ball, you should be aware of where the other members of your group are so you don't accidentally strike them with your ball or your club. And as a person not hitting the ball, be aware of where the other members of your group are so you don't accidentally walk into the firing range. This applies for other golfers on other holes as well: Be aware of your surroundings to avoid people being unintentionally hurt.

Lend a hand finding the ball: When another member of your group is looking for a lost ball, give them a hand. This is particularly true if the path to your ball is near where they're looking. Take a moment and add a second set of eyes to the hunt.

When looking for lost balls, only take a moment: This is a game, and these are, at most, $4 golf balls. Don't spend 10 minutes looking for your lost ball. It's ok to dip into the bushes, brush your club through the tall grass, and spend a couple minutes looking for that errant shot. But if that little white ball hasn't appeared after a minute or two, just assume it's in a better place, take your drop, and move along.

Understand the rules: Very few people are going to be experts in the rules of golf, but everyone playing should try to learn the basics. Invest a couple bucks in a golf bag copy of the USGA Rules of Golf, and thank me later. You likely won't be able to recite how many club lengths of relief you are entitled to take from a man-made object vs. standing water, but knowing that you get some relief without a penalty makes the game go faster and saves you an agonizing shot. If you're unsure, look it up in your newly acquired USGA rules book. Or ask the other members of your group. If they know the rules, they're probably happy to share.

Be aware of the location of the next tee box: As you approach the green, whether you're already on the green or you are hitting your final chip shot, be aware of the location of the next tee box. When you're ready to putt, leave your bag on the line between the pin and the next tee box. When the group is done putting, everyone can walk toward the next hole and pick up their bag along the way. This prevents players from needing to run 20 yards back down the hole to fetch their bag, and thus making the group behind have to wait before hitting their approach shots.

On the green, mark your ball: Before you start the round make sure you either have a small coin in your pocket, or you have a ball marker in your bag. If you don't, every pro shop has ball markers for no more than a nickel. Every pro shop carries them because every golfer should have at least one. It's not just a courtesy to the other golfers in your group. Marking your ball gives you a chance to clean it and remove any unseen encumbrances that might disrupt your putt. It also forces you to take a moment and evaluate your putt. You'll be surprised at the difference this makes in your putting accuracy.

Do not walk in another golfer's line: When you hear someone say "watch my line," they're referring to the path on the green their ball will take on its way to the hole. Golf greens are soft, and as you walk your foot leaves an imprint. This can interfere with a putt. When you walk across the green-- either to mark your ball, or to make your own putt, be aware of the location of all of the other players' balls or markers on the green. Trace the approximate line their ball will need to take to the hole, and avoid stepping on that line. Take a large step over the line, or walk around entirely. It's awkward at first, but seasoned golfers will appreciate the effort.

Watch your shadow: When on the putting green, be aware of your shadow. A person's shadow makes it more difficult to read the break in a green, or to see the undulation around the cup. If you are moving, your shadow can also be a distraction, especially as it gets closer to the cup. The same problem can arise on the tee box, so keep an eye on where you cast your shadow while other players are hitting.

Tending the pin: A rule in golf states that if a golfer's ball strikes the pin while they're on the putting green, the golfer is assessed a penalty. This is one of the reasons the pin is removed from the hole while putting. Sometimes the golfer is putting from so far away that they cannot see the hole without the pin. In this case, another golfer can "tend" the pin for them: The second golfer stands next to the pin, about an arm's length from the cup, with a hand on the flagstick. As the putt approaches the hole, the second golfer removes the pin to ensure the ball won't come into contact. Here are a few “sub-rules” for this one:

- If you are near the pin and your ball is closer to the hole, offer this service to the golfer making a long putt. You can often just say "would you like the pin in or out." If they say "in" then you tend the pin. If they say "out" then you can simply pull the pin and place it on the edge of the green, out of the way of the other golfers.

- When tending the pin, pay special attention to rule #12, and do not step on anyone's line.

- You should also pay special attention to rule #13, and make sure your shadow is not in the putters' line, or on the hole.

15. Be prepared to putt when your turn comes: Everyone has a slightly different routine they follow on the green, like their number of practice swings, how they read the putt, and how they line up. Don't wait until it's your turn to start your routine. Read the green and your putt while you wait, so long as it doesn't interfere with the other golfers. Take your practice swings. Visualize the line. Be ready. This will ensure you are engaged and focused on your game, and will help with the pace of play.

16. Finishing out your putt: If you miss your putt, and you are within a foot or two of the hole, ask the other golfers if it's ok for you to finish out. You do not HAVE to mark your ball and wait for everyone else to putt. However, don't feel obligated to do this: If you really feel you need a moment to regroup and read your new putt, you have the right to do so by marking your ball and waiting your turn. But so long as you are confident you can make the putt, and can do so without standing on another golfer's line, ask to finish out and 99 golfers in 100 will accommodate.

17. If you hit your ball into (or into the vicinity of) another group: There are several things to consider here:

If you think you might be able to hit the group in front of you, just don't hit. Even if you are having an off day and think it's a low likelihood, you should still wait. Better safe than sorry. No one likes to have a ball roll between their feet, much less get hit. I've been hit by wild shots on more than one occasion, and can vouch for the pain they cause.

If you hit, and you think your ball is heading in the direction of another group, yell "FORE!" Yell quickly, and yell loudly.

If your ball does unexpectedly end up in the vicinity of the group in front of you, make a concerted effort to apologize in person. When you get to the green, walk over to their tee box and apologize. If they're walking by on the next hole, walk into their fairway and apologize. Do this right away, on the same hole if possible. It may seem awkward, but it's an expected courtesy.

Don't feel intimidated by all of these guidelines, but do keep them in mind as you head out for a round of golf with potential or existing business associates, or even with your in-laws. Most of the above are just common courtesies extended to the environment of the golf course. Naturally, of course, the more of them you remember, the better off you'll be.

]]>2014-09-17T15:11:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/storing-hierarchical-data-in-a-database
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/storing-hierarchical-data-in-a-database#When:19:48:00ZStoring hierarchical data in a database: two approaches for stable storage and fast reporting of tree data.

Many times we need to store enormous amounts of “tree” or “hierarchical” data:

Hundreds of categories, sub-categories and sub-sub-categories in a single online store

Navigation menus of extremely complex sitemaps

Relationship of members who are involved in affiliate marketing campaigns

Proper organization and indexing of this data will make it possible to easily:

Display results (how do you build a navigation tree?)

Report on statistics (how many people are in this member’s affiliate down-line?)

Extract a specific segment of the tree desired (do you want to show the sub-nav in the side bar of a category detail page?)

Adjacent List Model: the “parent-child” method

The standard method of storing hierarchical data is simple parent-child relationship. Each record in the database includes a “parent id”, and a recursive query through the records build the children, siblings, and levels of the tree. Adding a new record to the system only requires the ID of the parent, with no other indexing. The advantages of this method are the simplicity, and low-cost of entering new records. If you add a child record, you simply need to know the parent ID and everything else will build out fine. The cost comes to building out the tree, or running reports on the data when you get into larger data sets. This might not be any big deal for a small navigation tree, but if you are trying to show the genealogy of an affiliate marketing team the numbers can get into the thousands, and the recursion through the data can be brutal.

Parent Child Tree

Parent - Child Relationship, the storage of the Parent ID

Pros:

Easy to insert new data (no indexing required)

Lightweight storage of data (only one field “parent id” required to build an entire affiliate tree)

“levels of the tree” (how deep you are) is inherently obvious, as each level requires a new query.

Cons:

Very intensive overhead to report

Example: "Show all child records of a single node"

Given parent “A”, build a tree of all members of the affiliate downline:

First show all records with Parent ID = “A”

For each of these records, find the records that have the corresponding parent ID

Rinse and repeat. (one query per level, but if you want to get the granularity, you may have to run one query per each child record)

You can see how quickly the queries add up, and come at a heavy cost.

Nested Sets to the rescue!

Another technique is to build an index for each record using nested sets. In a nested set, each record contains two indices, a “left” and “right” index number. The indexes are created by starting at the root of the tree, and working from left to right through each node of the tree.

In standard tree-format, this looks confusing and difficult to manage.

But, view the data set from the TOP and the brilliance shines through. Each node, in essence, is a container holding the indexes of each of the child nodes below. The left and right index numbers now line up from left to right. If there are any child records, the left and right indexes of the children will be a number larger then the left of the parent, and smaller than the right.

Here’s an example:

Pros

Reporting is easy and lightweight

Quick selection of downline sets

Cons

Adding or removing records requires a re-index of the entire tree

Report details (such as finding the number of levels in the child-set of records) can require complex queries

Example: “how many children are below node A”?

Because of the pre-indexing of the nodes, you only need to take the difference between the left and right nodes, subtract 1 and divide by 2 to get the total number of children of a given node. This can be done without any queries involving the children themselves.

Node A

Index "left" = 1

Index "right" = 16

((Right - Left) - 1) / 2 = Total Number of Children

((16 - 1) - 1)/2 = 8 nodes

]]>2014-09-10T19:48:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/quantifying-common-sense-with-card
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/quantifying-common-sense-with-card#When:16:09:00ZHow often have you been frustrated trying to locate specific information on a website – navigating aimlessly through a few layers of a site – only to give up and use a search engine to locate the information? When that happens, it's a terrible outcome for both the audience and the owners of the site. Without overstating the obvious, website owners should always do their best to respond to concerns around visitor retention and site usability. If your audience's needs cannot easily be met on your site, what is to prevent them from meeting their needs elsewhere? This is why the information architecture of a website, while often overlooked, is paramount in planning a successful Web project.

When coordinating the structure of a site, it is crucial to optimize the organization of content so that it's intuitive to the audience. This helps to ensure users are able to find what they are looking for with a minimal amount of frustration. Often times only a few people already involved in the planning and development of a website will have input into the organization and menu structures of the site's content. What a project stakeholder might consider as 'common sense' may actually be biased by over-familiarity of the content. Wouldn't a better approach be to have the audience contribute their insights in a measurable, meaningful, and non-objective way?

Information architecture (IA) is the structural design of information ecosystems, which focuses on organizing and labeling content. A useful tool in IA is a technique called card sorting, which does involve sorting actual cards, in real life or virtually. It allows potential users to remotely gather feedback ensuring that the menus and navigational structures of websites are intuitive and content is discoverable to your customers.

In this post I'd like to introduce you to card sorting techniques to help optimize your site's IA.

Card sorting informs the IA of your website by defining navigation and menu structure. The cards or items being sorted represent major content groupings for your site.

There are two types of card sorts, open and closed.

Open Card Sort: Participants in this type of card sort are given topics, which will form the content of a site. They are asked to group (sort) cards into categories, which they feel accurately describe the content. The cards in this sort might include a list of services that your business offers and a list of products that you sell. Very often the way users think of your content is different from the way you would see it.

Closed Card Sort: In a closed card sort, participants place content into pre-defined categories. This type of a sort might be useful if you already have a site structure but are trying to place content on the site and want to use users’ insights to figure out the best place for new information.

Open and closed card sorts can be used together to first define the content categories, and then used for a new group of participants to determine the best structure for your site.

Card sorts not only help organize site content, but also allow you to understand your users’ expectations as to where certain content should be placed and how the information will be navigated.

Traditionally, card sorts were carried out in live sessions and participants used printed cards. There was a lot of set-up and coordination. All users had to be gathered at the same time and a facilitator guided the session, which usually took an hour.

Online solutions such as Optimal Sort by Optimal Workshop streamline the card sort process and allow for participants to complete the time sort asynchronously. Their platform is intuitive, easy to use, and reduces the whole process into three easy steps:

Input your cards (content items)

Set up your survey

Email the link to your participants

The raw data from the survey can be downloaded for your custom analysis or you can use the built-in reports to compare similarity matrices, or dendograms. The system will even provide you with sample IA structures based on most popular groupings of content.

By analyzing this 'crowd sourced' data, it becomes possible to identify consensus in your test subjects and create more audience-friendly structures on your website.

When did writing become “content”? I was in journalism school in 1998-99, and it seems to me that it was some time after that. In school we talked about the content of a piece, but did not refer to a piece as content per se. It seems like content as a stand-alone term is a fairly new in our media world, and it seems to have become an indispensable term since media went digital.

“What kind of content do you produce?” is now an entirely acceptable and standard career question for a writer. This bothers me and I'm trying to figure out why. Twenty years ago the equivalent of that question might have been, “What kind of writing do you do?” Maybe the former question seems to me, as a writer, a bit cold and soulless, devoid of recognition of inspiration. Does calling a piece of writing “content” extinguish all potential for grace and beauty? No, it’s just a label. Yet saying “I create content” versus “I am a writer” feels like it devalues the craft of putting voice to thoughts, readability to emotion or argument.

The allure of digital content – and its fallout, social media – is clearly irresistible, but perhaps in our current trend to Twitterize and make sellable our content, we could recall that when the media theorist Marshall McLuhan said in the 1960s, “the medium is the message,” it was recognized by some not as a triumphant and celebratory statement but as a cautionary foretelling. Partly, what McLuhan was conveying is that how a message is delivered controls how its audience perceives it. It can also control how members of that audience relate the message to one another, and then, in turn, how those people relate to one another in general. It leads me to think now that amongst all of our digital content and all of our likes and retweets and hits and pins, what we’re sometimes doing isn’t fully communicating but publishing and consuming information without processing or analyzing it, and I find that to be limiting in many ways, and I feel that in some way, the current way content has become commodified is to blame.

The revival of the Virtual Reality (VR) craze is certainly well under way, and the opportunity for VR on the Web is now particularly exciting. The Web is a diverse, connected universe where many types of media and experiences can be created and shared. People can be productive, have fun, and learn, all from within their browser. But it’s far from the ultimate media device, mainly because of its lack of immersive visuals. So, isn't it time we transform the Web to a fully immersive capable portal?

That transformation is happening, slowly. Some big current developments have come from Google and, separately, WebGL founder and Mozilla software contributor, Vladimir Vukićević, who recently posted on his blog: “We want to take some of the first steps [toward]...adding native support for VR devices to early experimental builds of Firefox, so that Web developers can start experimenting with adding VR interactivity to their websites and content. This is only the first of many steps that we'll be taking over the coming weeks and months.”

Receiving input from orientation and position sensors, with a focus on reducing latency from input/render to final presentation

These efforts have been already been translated into an application outside of traditional Web browsers, but still maintain a web-based programming language to achieve VR experiences. The program is called JanusVR, and it’s out now, for FREE! I would try to explain it myself, but James McCrae, the creator of JanusVR, offers this description on the program’s site: “Pages with special HTML tags can show enhanced 3D content, and interactive editing of these ‘FireBoxRooms’ is possible from within Janus VR directly. ‘Site translators’ take the content and known structure of existing sites, generating FireBoxRooms from this data, which spatially arrange the content in a more meaningful manner. The experience is also ‘multi-player’ or collaborative — multiple people can navigate virtual spaces together, communicating via voice or text and sharing portals to new areas with each other.”

In case you missed that, when visiting a website in JanusVR you will actually see other people in that room, or website, moving about the space and actually viewing the content, in realtime virtual 3D! How futuristic is that?

A look at the JanusVR environment with various “portals” or websites.

The release of loads of impressive demos to go along with JanusVR offers us an enticing reminder that virtual reality and common Web browsers are nearly ready to meet (if they haven’t already). The team at JanusVR has already been able to expand the maximum size of the FireBoxRooms, which are allowing for much richer experiences.

The syntax is not that far off Web languages we already know how to use, and actually, the main file is just an HTML file using an “svg-like” syntax language. Nonetheless, the page is started like any ol’ HTML file. As soon as the VR devkit for Chrome and FireFox progresses, I hope to see steps toward a universal language that these three programs can all use.

It’s apparent now more than ever that we will soon have the ability to experience much richer forms of content on the World Wide Web. With Internet speeds increasing 100 fold within the near future, and early stages of VR support in FireFox and Chrome browsers, the Web seems set for yet another face-lift. But this face-lift seems different than those of the past, and on a much larger scale. It’s much more than a few more options in our code: It brings all 3D content together in a medium that most devices can access, which would be a very powerful advancement in development.

Currently, the Oculus Rift is the only VR device able to access Janus VR and VR content.

One can only begin to think of the endless amount of possibilities that the new virtual Web will bring. Can you conceive of the possible scope it can bring to e-commerce products? Imagine being able to view a product online in virtual reality with 1:1 accuracy, being able to visually teleport your users to the outside of your building, or even provide a virtual tour of the inside as well. In the coming month, I may be fortunate enough to receive my very own Oculus Rift, and begin working on VR solutions on the Web. Expect an update on some exciting news relating to all of this madness, and don’t be surprised to see GRAYBOX on the virtual side of the Web very soon!

]]>2014-08-06T15:42:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/magento-simple-steps-to-full-page-cache
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/magento-simple-steps-to-full-page-cache#When:17:19:00ZMagento is a powerful, full-feature e-commerce platform, but the power it provides demands outrageous server resources. Full-page caching of Magento pages is a must for all customers who want their site to load quickly. Full-page caching stores the output of the generated HTML page, and when the next visitor comes to that page, the cached version of that page is shown instead of reprocessing everything. The advantage? Incredible speed gains with corresponding server resource reduction. The disadvantage? If you require dynamic content, caching can get a little more complex to prevent out-of-date material from being shown to the customer. Magento Enterprise comes stocked with a very robust full page cache system, but we recently have been employing a full-page cache add-on in our clients’ Community Edition Magento installations as well.

Each has received very positive reviews, and is worth investigating prior to committing to a full page cache system for your site.

We have been using Extendware’s Full Page Cache Pro module, for these reasons and benefits:

Incremental product pricing, so you may only buy the features you actually need

Simple installation and configuration

Great customer support

The installation process is a fairly standard Magento installation. Put the files in the right place, then log out of the admin panel, clear the var/cache directory, and log back in.

With only the primary cache installed, configuration is a snap and requires little more than selecting “Enabled” and saving the configuration. For front-end dynamic content, hole-punching, or pages you want to exclude from caching entirely, this requires the secondary cache add-on and a bit more configuration. There is no complex Memcached, Redis, or APC to install and configure (although those can be used in tandem with full-page caching).

The results are measurable and immediate.

Before caching installation:

After caching installation:

Our Magento installation was taking more than 10 seconds to process the initial request! With the Extendware add-on, this initial request was reduced down to a value that wasn't able to be measured by the browser plugin, and the overall processing time was cut in half.

]]>2014-07-29T17:19:00+00:00http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/10-reasons-to-use-drupal
http://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/10-reasons-to-use-drupal#When:16:41:00ZDrupal is a web development framework / platform. With a background focused on generating online communities and user-generated content, Drupal is a versatile platform that allows efficient website development.

The first release was published in January 2001, and since then, the community has kept growing. For that reason, at GRAYBOX, Drupal is one of our favorite content management systems. Here 10 reasons why you should make Drupal one of your favorite CMSs too:

1. DRUPAL IS FREE SOFTWARE

The customer benefits are:

No licenses are paid

There isn't a dependency on suppliers

The software is constantly evolving because all the people working on this system publish their successes, so others can benefit for free

2. DRUPAL HAS A CONSOLIDATED COMMUNITY AND A SOLID PRESENCE ON THE WEB

Drupal has had many years of product exposure and more than a million web site installations worldwide. Big names like MTV, British Council, Sun Microsystems, the White House, Twitter Developers, IKEA, Garmin, and BestBuy Mobile, are among those who use sites are built in Drupal.

3. DRUPAL MAKES EVERYTHING POSSIBLE

To rephrase Drupal’s purpose in a redundant but important way, its focus is content management. Any community or group of users who uses the web to manage a project, to communicate, or to publish information on the Internet will find Drupal meets their goal, whether their site’s focus is retail, media, or other content, on computer or mobile platforms. Drupal also supports social network integration.

4. DRUPAL IS MODULAR AND SCALABLE

Drupal is based on a development environment and small module set-up that makes allows for the operation of the entire site to be changed possible that. Thus, it can be adapted to meet any site or development requirements. It also adapts to add new modules and themes very easily.

5. DRUPAL IS INTUITIVE

Drupal lets you post and manage content, search and view areas with restricted access from anywhere with just a browser and Internet connection. Site content can be managed and created without knowing any HTML.

6. DRUPAL IS MULTI-LANGUAGE

Drupal was designed to meet the requirements of an international audience. It provides a complete framework for building a multilingual website, a blog, a CMS, or an online community. All text can be translated using a graphical interface, importing existing translations, or integrated with other translation tools.

7. DRUPAL HAS A CONTROL SYSTEM WITH ROLES AND PERMISSIONS

Drupal has a powerful permission system that allows users to have different permissions or profiles and perform some action specific to unique permissions. It also allows the management of content in a decentralized manner: There can be more than one administrator with different degrees of access.

8. DRUPAL IS PRIMED FOR SEO and special accessibility

Drupal is prepared to work with UTF-8 encoding, a generation of clean and permanent URLs based on different content criteria (title, date, author, subject, section, etc). The backend is clearly separated from the frontend via the theming layer. This allows web coding in XHTML Strict and facilitates the implementation of AA/AAA levels of accessibility.

9. DRUPAL IS READY FOR MOBILE DEVICES

Its platform enables development versions for mobile devices. Whether making small adjustments to the desktop version, initiating the development with the methodology mobile-first, or developing a completely new version only for mobile devices, Drupal is ready and helps you to do it easily.

10. DRUPAL INTEGRATES SOCIAL NETWORKS

Drupal can integrate Facebook or Twitter users by associating their profile with a website. It automates content to be published to different social networks. For example, content can be automatically published on Twitter or Facebook when a user creates an entry into the site.